Retaining local talents – important side of the Population “coin”

As much as the government wants to bring in more foreigners to Singapore, so that we have a stable population, shouldn’t we also take a look at the population “leakages”?

Leakages are such as the about 12,000 abortions annually over the last decade, as pointed out by NMP Eugene Tan in the White Paper debate. Can anything on policy solutions be applied to this scenario.

Another source of leakages are the renouncing of citizenship by Singaporeans, who in turn move to countries such as Canada, Australia and the UK. Probably we can also devote attention to looking into what are the factors that “push” these Singaporeans away from Singapore. Subsequently a more in depth study can be done to determine how can we mitigate the effectiveness of such “push” factors. We can also identify the “pull” factors of foreign countries that attract Singaporeans to them, and perhaps see if we too can incorporate some of the features in our system.

Of course, in a world of globalization where the movement of people is common as they seek opportunities worldwide, Singapore should also work towards the idea where we can be attractive for our own kind to choose to stay, and not only attractive for foreigners to come.

I believe retaining locals, and attracting talents are both sides of a same coin, in terms of working towards a both dynamic and sustainable population.