Singapore ministers will continue to be among the highest paid in the world even after proposed pay cuts ranging from 36 per cent for the prime minister to 37 per cent for “entry level” incumbents, as we saw in the previous post.

The Committee to Review Ministerial Salaries headed by Gerard Ee has changed the benchmark for ministers’ salaries while proposing the pay cuts.

What it doesn’t say is whether the ministers would have been paid more or less if it did not change the benchmark.

The restriction that the ministers’ salaries should be pegged to the income of only the top eight earners from certain professions and businesses has been lifted.

Instead, the committee proposes the ministers’ salaries be pegged to the median income of  the top 1,000 earners who are Singapore citizens, irrespective of their occupations.

Surely, that group includes more businessmen, some of whom are billionaires. Only eight “manufacturers” were part of the group the ministers’ salaries were pegged to earlier.Continue Reading