Overview of Changes in Our Population - Minister grace fu
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Our total fertility rate (TFR) was 1.19
and we welcomed over 31,000
Singaporean babies. This was fewer than in the 2012
"Dragon Year", but more than 2011, the "Rabbit Year".
To mitigate the shrinking and ageing of our citizen population, we continued a
calibrated approach of granting about 20,000 Singapore Citizenships (SCs) and
30,000 Permanent Residences (PRs) in 2013, to those we assessed to be able to
contribute and integrate well into our society. This has kept our PR population stable
at about half a million for the last five years.
With the tightening of our foreign manpower policies to slow down population
growth, foreign workforce growth in non-construction sectors
halved to 3.5% in 2013
compared to 7.1% in 2012. The bulk of the foreign manpower growth was in the
construction sector to speed up our major infrastructure projects such as in housing
and transport. As a result, our total population growth fell to 1.6% last year. This was
the slowest population growth in the past nine years, and almost half the average
rate of 3.1% from 2004 to 2012.
