Singapore appears in no mood to relax visa norms for foreign firms

Months after Singapore advised its companies to hire more local talent, Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam Saturday said one-third of his country's workforce was already foreign and that it would be “mindless” to open borders without a proper policy to constraint people into the job market.

Singapore has been one of the strongest proponents of liberalization of goods and services but the movement of people has to operate within some framework of constraint, he said during Delhi Economics Conclave organized by the finance ministry here.

"One-third of our workforce is already foreign, it would be mindless if you have open borders without any policy framework to constrain the flow of people into your job market," Shanmugaratnam said.

He said of the 5.5 million work force in his country, around two million were foreigners.

Shanmugaratnam said complete free flow of labor was “wrong economics” as it would discourage upgrading of productivity. "This is a reality. This is a reality all over the globe," he said.

According to Nasscom president R Chandrashekhar, all Indian companies had earlier this year received communication for fair consideration which implied local hiring.

Singapore hosts all bigwig IT companies such as HCL, TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Cognizant and L&T Infotech but with the number of visas coming down, these firms are relocating to other countries.

Indian IT companies have also been subject to tighter visa norms in the US, which is home to 60% of India's IT products.