The Singapore government has once again made efforts to debunk the misconceptions about the India-Singapore Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA), this time in two Youtube videos explaining two “serious falsehoods” relating to CECA.
However, viewers do not seem to react positively to the videos based on the comments left on the videos and the number of dislikes.
The first video, which was posted by the Gov.sg on Monday (23 Aug) as an “abridged version” of the video, started off with the fact that CECA is one of the 26 Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) that was signed by Singapore in 2005.
It revealed that the investments made by Singapore companies to India have grown to S$61 billion since the inception of CECA, of which these companies supported a total of 97,000 local jobs in Singapore as of 2019.
At the same time, Singapore gained help from Indian companies to boost its Infocomm sector.
The video also highlighted two “serious falsehoods” swirling around CECA, with the first falsehood being that “CECA allows the free flow of Indian nationals as Intra-Corporate Transferees (ICTs)”.
Gov.sg deemed it’s a falsehood because ICTs must meet the work pass qualifying criteria before being allowed to work in Singapore, and at present, there are only about 500 Indian ICTs in Singapore.
The second falsehood it highlighted was that “CECA has allowed 127 professions free access to Singapore”.
Gov.sg stressed that the listing of 127 categories “does not confer any free pass to Indian nationals” as it is up to Singapore to decide based on the country’s needs and rules at the end of the day.
“Is the number of Indian nationals working in Singapore a result of CECA? No. Whether someone is hired to work in Singapore depends on the industry demand for talent, not CECA. CECA does not lead to more favourable treatment for Indian nationals,” it added.
Gov.sg has also released a longer version of the video, where it implies that the number of foreign professionals in Singapore is based on the demands of the industry.
“Let’s consider a company that wants to set up here. Say it needs 3,000 people but finds only 2,500 in Singapore because we simply do not have that many people. It will need to bring in 500 people from overseas. If we say no to these 500 foreigners, the investment wouldn’t come in. But if we say yes, that’s 2,500 more jobs for Singaporeans,” it explained.
In the video, it was revealed that the number of Employment Pass (EP) holders have increased by 112,000 between 2005 to last year, as well as the number of local PMEs which increased to more than 380,000.
While Gov.sg is aware of the job competition between local and foreign PMEs at the individual company level, it noted that the government cannot “completely shield” Singaporeans from the competition.
But it promised to ensure fair competition between local and foreign PMEs through regular updates of the country’s work pass criteria.
“For example, in 2020, we raised the minimum qualifying salary for EPs from S$3,600 to S$4,500. This salary requirement also increases with age to provide sufficient protection for our mature workers. The bottom line is that we want foreigners with the valuable skills we lack and not because they are cheaper,” it said.
Gov.sg noted that the second “real challenge on the ground” is a mismatch of skills, of which the government has invested “heavily” in skills upgrading and job facilitation to tackle this. It revealed that nearly 110,000 locals have secured jobs and skills opportunities through the SGUnited jobs and skills package as of April this year.
Other challenges include foreign nationals using “fake degrees” to be employed in Singapore, and unfair hiring practices by companies – such as when a foreign department head tries to hire workers from his own country.
“We have the Fair Consideration Framework to guard against discriminatory hiring practices and monitor nationality concentration at the company level. Errant employers have been penalized and MOM keeps a close watch on this,” said Gov.sg.
As for the public’s concern about the number of foreigners in the Infocomm sector, it explained that Singapore does not have enough locals to take up the jobs in Infocom tech support.
“The reality is we don’t have enough locals to do all the backend, Infocomm tech support for our companies. Without these foreign workers, the companies, they serve would simply relocate to places where they can find support.
“So, yes, we have more EPs but that is because we brought in a lot of investment and created many jobs for Singaporeans,” it remarked.
The issue of CECA
CECA had its first beginnings in April 2002 when then-Prime Minister Goh Chock Tong and India’s then-Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee announced intentions to explore closer economic ties between the two nations to come up with a comprehensive economic partnership.
Singapore fielded a 30-member negotiation team led by Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat, who at the time was the permanent secretary for trade and industry, while India’s delegation was headed by Secretary of Commerce Dipak Chatterjee.
After 13 rounds of negotiation held in India and Singapore over the next three years, CECA was signed off in June 2005 when Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong made a state visit to India.
According to the Enterprise Singapore website, one of the key benefits of CECA is a tariff reduction of 81 per cent for Singapore-originating exports to India including products such as food, plastics, electronics, pharmaceuticals, and mechanical appliances.
Another aspect of CECA is that it provides for lateral transfers of professionals.
Basically, citizens and permanent residents of either countries are guaranteed entry and stay in the other country as business visitors, short-term service suppliers, professionals hired directly by a company in Singapore, as well as intra-corporate transferees (ICTs).
However, CECA has been blamed for allowing Indian nationals into Singapore to displace Singaporeans’ jobs.
In contrast to nationals from Malaysia and China who take up the bulk of the migrant workers in Singapore, Indian nationals are seen to take up jobs in the professional sectors of industries as compared to the former nationals who are largely concentrated in the blue-collar sectors which are largely shunned by locals due to the harsh working environment and low wages.
The Singapore government has multiple times attempted to debunk the misconceptions of CECA, saying that no provision in CECA allows Indian nationals to be given citizenship in Singapore.
Even though many questions have been put to the government over the years regarding the actual data pertaining to talent transfer between Singapore and India under CECA, among other details, the government’s answers have been scarce.
In Parliament on 6 July, Progress Singapore Party’s (PSP) NCMP Leong Mun Wai asked about the number of nationals from countries under Singapore’s FTAs—namely China, India, US, and Australia—who have entered and worked in Singapore using ICT visas, professional visas, and dependent passes for each year from 2005 until last year.
In response, Manpower Minister Tan See Leng noted that the total number of ICTs have “consistently been very small” as there were only about 4,200 ICTs working in Singapore last year, of which 500 were brought in from India.
This is out of 177,000 Employment Pass (EP) holders in Singapore, said Dr Tan.
“None of our FTAs, including CECA, gives ICTs unfettered access to our labour market, they all have to meet the Ministry of Manpower’s work pass criteria,” he added.
Dr Tan went on to explain that such employees are subject to additional checks on their seniority, employment history and work experience. They are also subject to “more conditions” on their eligibility to bring in dependants, and apply for permanent residency or future employment in Singapore.
He also clarified that there is no such category as “professional visas”, adding that all 127 categories of professionals under CECA currently come in under the regular work pass framework.
We note that Dr Tan only provided figured for various passes issued under the FTA for 2020, instead of every year since 2005 as requested by Mr Leong. There was also no breakdown of the figures by country.
In his second Parliamentary question on the FTAs and CECA, Mr Leong asked the number of nationals from China, India, USA, and Australia, holding EPs or S Passes who are currently working in companies with fewer than 10 employees.
Dr Tan replied that about a quarter of the 177,100 EP holders in Singapore hail from India last year, which has increased from about one-seventh in 2005, but he did not provide any specific numbers to this.
“The top nationalities that comprise around two-thirds of our EP holders has been consistent since 2005 – namely, China, India, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, and the UK. The interest is really in Indian EP holders,” he explained.
Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat, who said that he did not plan on speaking in Parliament on 6 July, eventually rose to “set on record” that the movement of natural persons in Chapter 9 of CECA was “not used as a bargaining chip” in settling the free trade pact.
Chapter 9 in CECA, on the movement of natural persons, pertains to temporary entry for individuals into both countries.
Mr Heng explained: “The chapter on the movement of natural persons was indeed one that the negotiators in India were very keen on and they said, ‘What do we get?’. Well, I said, ‘No, because this is of great importance to Singapore. You have a population that is over a billion’.
“Singapore had a population of, at that time, probably about three million or so. And I said, ‘We would be easily swamped. So, we must have very strict agreements on this’.”
Mr Leong had also asked the Minister for Trade and Industry in July about how many of the 97,000 locals hired by Singaporean companies with investments in India are new jobs that can be attributed to the signing of CECA and how many are existing jobs that are re-designated.
In a written reply, Mr Gan Kim Yong said that this specific data is not available as “companies consider multiple factors before they hire new employees, define job scopes, or re-designate existing positions”.
