Premier Lee's announcement reverses govt plan to stem foreigners' influx
SINGAPORE: Singapore, fresh from announcing record economic growth, said it must bring in more workers from abroad to help keep inflation low, apparently backsliding on a commitment to stem an influx of foreigners.
The government plans to allow more than 100,000 foreign workers into the city-state this year, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong told Singapore media during a trip this week to the US.
"If we don't allow the foreign workers in, you are going to have overheating" of the economy, Lee said in a Straits Times article posted Thursday on the prime minister's website. "We have to accept that." The government had pledged earlier this year to stem the inflow of foreigners as part of a policy shift toward boosting economic growth through higher productivity.
Singapore's decades-long boom, which has made it one of the world's wealthiest countries, has been fueled in part by foreign laborers who are willing to do jobs in areas such as construction and hospitality for lower wages than locals.
