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SINGAPORE: According to ECA International's Salary Trends Survey 2007-2008, workers in Asia can expect the highest salary increases this year.
ECA International is the world's largest membership organisation for human resources, serving a network of over 4,000 HR professionals in 71 countries.
Its survey contains information collected from multinational companies about actual salary increases for last year and predicted increases for this year.
The results have indicated that Singapore workers could expect salary increases of 5 percent.
While this is below the regional average of 7.3 percent, it is still up from last year's 4.5 percent. It is also a reflection of the longstanding trend of rising salary increases in Singapore.
ECA International's general manager, Mr Lee Quane, said for a developed economy, Singapore's level of wage increase is high. That is because companies are facing a relatively tight labour market – a trend that has shown little signs of changing this year.
Asked if current fears of a recession in the US would dampen salary increase projections, Mr Lee said "no".
He said: "We see high turnover rates of staff in a lot of economies in Asia, like India, Singapore, Hong Kong and China. What this means is that people are moving elsewhere to other jobs for higher salaries, in general.
"Although companies in Singapore may pay an average of 5 percent (salary increase), this is actually quite conservative, and companies - despite the downturn in the US - may actually end up having to pay higher than average salary increases in order to hold on to their key staff."
Meanwhile, the Singapore National Employers Federation (SNEF) said its poll on a sample of 275 companies showed that wage increase for this year is about the same as that for last year, with the median at 4 percent.
SNEF's executive director, Mr Koh Juan Kiat, said the organisation's member companies are sticking to the recommendations of the National Wages Council, which noted that while economic growth remained healthy, there were downside risks such as a slowdown in the US economy and vulnerability of oil prices.
Hence, built-in wage increases must be sustainable and take into account productivity and company performance. The SNEF stressed that productivity growth for the first nine months of last year was relatively flat.
- CNA/so
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