Chart of the Day: Singapore to have 61,100 more foreigners by 2015

But local citizens will only increase 20,000.

According to CIMB, the increase of Singapore citizens peaked in 2009 (+91.2k) when more PRs and foreigners sought to lay down roots here.

Under the planned citizen increase, the growth rate will slow to only +20k p.a. Foreigner growth has already slowed from 130k-191k net adds (2007-08) to +37k (2012).

"The planned 2030 foreigner base of 2.6m implies a simple arithmetic average growth rate of 61k, not far from the 2009-12 range. It does not represent a change from the policies of tighter foreign worker inflows, which means that the current low unemployment rate will stay low and SMEs will still have to cope with lack of manpower and rising labour costs," CIMB said.

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