Tweak civil service salaries to keep Singapore competitive, policymakers urged

It might cause brain drain in the private sector.

Singapore’s extremely high civil service salaries need to be tweaked in order to ‘future-proof’ the country’s economy, according to experts at the DBS Asian Insights Conference.

Although competitive pay in the public sector has helped attract top talent and deter corruption, S R Nathan Fellow for the Study of Singapore Ho Kwon Ping warned that this might lead to a brain drain in the private sector.

“There’s this huge sucking noise of the best talented people going to the civil service… and that does hurt the private sector. Because either we have to keep up with salaries – which are quite high – or you have perhaps an overbalance, or a hollowing out of the best and brightest in Singapore, all going to the public sector. And that may not be good for Singapore in the long run,” Ho said.

Former top civil servant Ngiam Tong Dow backed this belief and warned that keeping top talents within the government might result in the formation of a “fossilised” elite.

“We must spread our talent through the economy, through society. When a young scholar comes back, he should not be sent to the Ministry of Finance’s Treasury division and be the regulator. He should really be sent to the EDB, or the Housing and Development Board, and serve an internship of maybe a year to learn the problems on the ground. Unless the civil servant knows the problems on the ground, he will become just a regulator,” Ngiam said.