By Narendra Aggarwal
April 9, 2007
AsiaOne

Fresh graduates with a good honours degree joining the civil service in June will get 10 per cent more in their starting pay.

The pay increase is for such graduates appointed to the Management Executive Scheme, Mr Teo Chee Hean, the minister-in-charge of the civil service, announced in Parliament today.

Starting salaries of other graduate schemes would be adjusted according to their market benchmarks, added the Minister.

"We will also adjust the salaries of officers who have been appointed recently, to maintain relativities with the incoming batch of fresh graduates. We will continue to monitor our salaries at the entry grades and make adjustments as necessary to maintain competitiveness," said Mr Teo.

He noted that recent surveys by SMU, and preliminary indications for NUS and NTU showed that pay offers for fresh graduates had been rising.

For instance, the average salary offer for a SMU graduate was about $2,800. One graduate reportedly received a $12,000 salary offer!

The minister said that the Civil Service had been adjusting starting salaries annually to keep in step with the market, both upwards and downwards.

"We dropped starting salaries by 10% during the recession years, and increased them when the economy recovered in recent years," he said.

He said that some Civil Service professional schemes such as accountants, economists and statisticians had an in-built “market adjustment component". The market salaries of these professions tended to be volatile – with large bonuses in boom times, but falling sharply during a recession.

The market adjustment component allowed the annual salaries of these schemes to be adjusted rapidly, up or down, without affecting the monthly salaries.

"We will raise the market adjustment components of these schemes according to their individual benchmarks. There is no further need to make other forms of adjustment for this group," said Mr Teo.

As private sector salaries were projected to increase by 4 per cent this year, according to Mercer HR Consulting, he said a basic payment amounting to 3-5% increase in the annual salaries would be given to Civil Service officers.

This payment would be performance-based and would be in the range of 0.5 to 0.75 months. Good performers would get up to 0.5 month, while better performers would get up to 0.75 month.

This payment would apply to schemes which are currently at or close to their market benchmarks, the minister said.

It will ensure civil service salaries are competitive. On top of this payment, civil servants will continue to receive their annual increment and the mid year annual variable payment. Like other Singaporeans, they will also enjoy the 1.5% increase in the employer CPF contribution from July this year.

The payment would apply to the Education Service, the Corporate Support Scheme and the Operations Support Scheme.

narendra@sph.com.sg

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