(Staff post from the STRAIT TIMES NEWS on 27 February 2026.)
SINGAPORE
– Singapore plans to take in between 25,000 and 30,000 new citizens every year
over the next five years, as the government moves to offset falling birth rates
and a rapidly aging population.
Deputy
Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong, speaking on Feb. 26 during the debate on the Prime
Minister’s Office budget, said the citizen population could start shrinking by
the early 2040s without intervention, as Singapore’s total fertility rate (TFR)
fell to a record low of 0.87 in 2025.
“Over
time, it will be practically impossible to reverse the trend, because we will
have fewer and fewer women who can bear children,” DPM Gan said, noting that
the TFR decline translates to just 44 children and 19 grandchildren for every
100 residents today.
He stressed the need for a “carefully managed immigration flow to augment our low birth rate,” while maintaining a stable citizen core and ensuring that new arrivals do not overwhelm public infrastructure such as housing and transport.
In
2025, about 25,000 individuals became Singapore citizens, following an average
of 21,300 new citizens granted annually from 2020 to 2024, according to the
Population In Brief 2025 report. Similarly, the number of new permanent
residents is expected to rise to around 40,000 a year over the next five years.
DPM
Gan highlighted that even with immigration, Singapore’s citizen population grew
only 0.7% in 2025, while the country’s population continues to age rapidly. One
in five citizens was 65 or older in 2025, up from one in eight in 2015.
“Low
birth rates and an ageing population will profoundly reshape our nation, our
society and our economy in the years ahead,” DPM Gan said, underscoring the
urgency of supporting Singaporeans in marriage and parenthood, alongside
selective immigration policies.
DPM Gan also noted that local workforce growth has slowed, adding that Singapore needs skilled foreign workers to fill critical manpower gaps and help companies build new capabilities. And in turn, this would also create more jobs for Singaporeans, he said.
He gave the example of how the number of Singaporeans in professional, managerial, executive and technical jobs rose by 308,000 in the past decade, while the number of Employment Pass (EP) and S Pass holders went up by 24,000.
But
he also stressed the need to keep a close eye on the growth of the non-resident
population, such as foreign workers, to ensure citizens remain the majority of
Singapore’s population. In the past five years, the foreign workforce,
including domestic helpers, grew an average of 3.3 per cent a year. This was
primarily driven by the post-pandemic construction boom. If work permit holders
in the construction industry are excluded, the foreign workforce grew an
average of 2.5 percent a year.
DPM
Gan said migrant workers, such as construction workers and domestic helpers, do
not fight with Singaporeans for jobs, but the key is to plan ahead to support
their numbers, such as catering for dormitories, transport and recreational
spaces.
In
contrast, EP and S Pass holders, who are better qualified and command higher
wages than work permit holders, make up less than a quarter of the foreign
workforce, he added. He was responding to questions on job competition by PAP
MPs Xie Yao Quan (Jurong Central) and Yip Hon Weng (Yio Chu Kang).
Workers’
Party chief Pritam Singh (Aljunied GRC) asked if the Government is prepared to
grant citizenship to PRs, for example, those who failed to get citizenship
multiple times even though they have assimilated over the years.
DPM Gan said the Government will keep open all options and take a fresh look at many of these applicants. But he noted that there are reasons why they were unsuccessful in the first place. He also said the Government will look at more sources of new immigrants.
Mr
Singh also asked if the Government is prepared to deviate from the current
ethnic composition of the population, to which DPM Gan said yes. “We will need
to be flexible, but I think it’s very important for us to ensure that we
maintain a broad balance,” he said. “I’m not talking about decimal digits, but
it’s important to maintain the balance so that we don’t change the overall
context, the texture of society.”
DPM
Gan said the Government will step up efforts to create good jobs for
Singaporeans and strengthen measures to ensure fair employment practices.
(Blogger’s Notes: The total fertility rate (TFR) of a population is the average number of children that are born to a woman over her lifetime. The replacement level, necessary for a population to replace itself without migration, is approximately 2.1. As of 2023, the total fertility rate varied widely across the world, from the lowest 0.7 in South Korea, to the highest 6.1 in Niger.
Singapore
being run seemingly forever by Lee Quan Yu and his family and cohorts is as
artificial and utopian as possibly can for a tiny island nation occupying one
of the most geopolitically startegic locations on this planet.
Singapore
would stay that (peaceful and prospering) way as long as Lee Quan Yu’s Secret
Population-Ratio or Race-Ratio (not allowed to speak of it, but it actually
exists) of 70% Chinese-Buddhists and 15% Malay-Muslims and other races the rest
is strictly maintained even after the passing away of Lee Quan Yu.
Just
to maintain that longstanding Buddhist dominance, in last few years Singapore
has even granted almost quarter-a-million educated Burmese-Buddhists the
highly-coveted Singaporean citizenship to compensate for the dwindling number
of Chinese-Buddhists due to their low marriage and birth rate.
And
believe it or not, Singapore has given away her citizenship so generously to so
many Burmese engineers that my Alma mater the Soviet-built Rangoon Institute of
Technology (RIT) has her biggest overseas Alumni Chapter in Singapore even
bigger than the Alumni Chapter back in Burma. This is not a mere Brain-Drain,
this is rather like a deadly Brain-Hemorrhage for our desperately poor Burma.)
