Employment Pass applicants’ qualifying salary raised to S$3,600 from 2017

SINGAPORE — From January next year, the qualifying salary for Employment Pass applications will be raised from S$3,300 to S$3,600.

Announcing this on Tuesday (July 26), the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) said that it was part of a regular update of the qualifying salary, to keep pace with rising wages here, to maintain the quality of foreign workers and to “enhance their complementarity” to the resident workforce.

The last change was made in January 2014, when the salary threshold was raised from S$3,000 to S$3,300. As of December last year, there were 187,900 Employment Pass holders.

The ministry added that its “manpower policy framework is designed to meet the manpower needs of the economy, so that businesses can stay competitive and grow, and ultimately create more and better jobs in Singapore”. When the update comes into effect, new Employment Pass applicants will be considered if they earn a minimum monthly salary of S$3,600 and meet other criteria on qualifications and experience.

“Those with more years of experience are also required to command higher salaries commensurate with their work experience and skill sets, as per current practice,” the ministry said.

Businesses will be given time to make adjustments. For example, based on the existing criteria, employees whose passes expire before next January will be able to renew them for up to three years. Those whose passes are due to expire between Jan 1 next year and June 30 next year will be able to renew them for a year.

Calling the update a “positive move”, Mr Patrick Tay, assistant secretary-general of the National Trades Union Congress, said in a Facebook post that it keeps up with the rising median wages of professionals, managers and executives (PMEs), and ensures that the quality of the foreign workforce is maintained.

However, he added that it is important for MOM to be watchful of companies and employers “who, through ‘creative means’, artificially blow up the wages of these foreign PMEs to meet this new criteria”. “(The) bottom line is that local PMEs should be better off and not worse off,” he said.