Oral Reply to Question No. 232: Mdm Ho Geok Choo: Projections on Types of Personnel required for Manufacturing, Construction and R&D in Singapore

Question No 232 of Notice Paper No 133 of 2007

For Oral Answer : Madam Ho Geok Choo: Projections on Types of Personnel required for Manufacturing, Construction and R&D in Singapore

Name and Constituency of Member of Parliament

Mdm Ho Geok Choo, Member for West Coast GRC

Question

To ask the Minister for Trade and Industry in light of the many projects that are presently in the pipeline such as the Integrated Resorts and transportation projects, what are the projections on the types of technical and engineering personnel required for manufacturing, construction and research and development in Singapore.

Answer

The requirements for technical and engineering manpower differs from sector to sector. In the manufacturing and info-comms sectors, the Economic Development Board (EDB) has projected that about 34,000 new engineering, technical and supervisory jobs would be required over the next four years, from 2007 to 2010.

As we seek to transform Singapore into a research and innovation-driven economy by intensifying our national R&D spending to 3% of GDP by 2010, we estimate that an additional 10,000 Research Scientists and Engineers (or RSEs in short) at the Bachelors, Masters and PhD levels, would be required to support the higher R&D expenditure.

In the construction sector, with many major developments like the two Integrated Resorts, Business and Financial Centre, and Sports Hub coming on-stream, the Building Construction Authority (BCA) has projected a requirement for up to 10,000 additional engineering, technical and supervisory personnel over the next 4 years.

MTI and our economic agencies work closely with MOM and MOE to translate the manpower demand projections for the key growth sectors into student recruitment numbers for the different educational institutions, namely, the universities, polytechnics and ITE. These institutions produce, on average, a steady pipeline of 30,000 engineering and technical manpower each year to meet industry demand.