I refer to the article “No more pensions for Singapore’s civil servants” (Yahoo News, Apr 8).
GDP bonus replaced with National Bonus
It states that “bonuses will no longer be pegged to economic growth through the Gross Domestic Product. Instead, the GDP bonus will be replaced with the National Bonus, the same bonus used in political leaders’ salaries.”
Since the new bonus formula for political leaders was approved in January 2012, and retroactively applied from 21 May 2011 – with the year 2012 already ended and all the benchmark data already available, when will the bonus for last year be announced?
4 indicators
The four indicators for the National Bonus with equal weightage are:
• Real median income growth rate of Singapore Citizens (25%);
• Real growth rate of the lowest 20th percentile income of Singapore Citizens (25%);
• Unemployment rate of Singapore Citizens (25%); and
• Real GDP growth (25%).
No real income growth?
As I unerstand that the real median and 20th percentile income (excluding employer CPF contribution) may have been below the required minimum 0.5 per cent benchmark in order to get a bonus, does it mean that they will not get any bonus for these 2 indicators? (“Yet another year of negative real wage increase?“, Jan 31)
(Note: In this connection, I wrote a letter to the media [Link], “asking why a real median income growth rate of -0.6% for 2011 was used in the calculation of the National Bonus for political office-holders, and the Prime Minister’s Office and MOM came out to clarify:
MOM’s 1.0% real median income growth rate for employed Singaporeans included the employers’ CPF contributions while the -0.6% real median income growth rate used by PMO for the National Bonus calculation did not include it.
PMO said it had computed the National Bonus payout using income figures sans the contributions as it was felt that changes to employers’ CPF rates are decided by the Government and, hence, should not be linked to the payout for political office-holders.”) (TR Emeritus link, Apr 7, 2012)
GDP growth below minimum benchmark
Since last year’s GDP growth was 1.3 percent, which is below the minimum hurdle of 2 per cent, does it mean that there may be no bonus for this indicator too?
Maximum 200% payout for unemployment rate?
Since the unemployment rate for Singaporeans was only available in early 2012, as in the past it was always lumped together with permanent residents (PRs) under the resident unemployment rate, was the Ministerial Salaries Review committee privy to the past years’ Singaporean rate which Singaporeans did not have access to until now?
As I understand that the Singaporeans’ unemployment rate was 3.1 per cent, when the committee set the maximum payout of 200 per cent at below 3.5 per cent, with the unemployment rate at 3.0 per cent last year, does this mean that this may be the only indicator that they will get a bonus? (“Ministerial salary review – what’s missing?” Jan 4 2012)
In this connection, do the new citizens of say about 25,000 a year, help to reduce the Singaporeans’ unemployment rate?
Leong Sze Hian
