Companies can seek up to $300,000 funding to tap foreign specialists' expertise
Companies who want to recruit foreign specialists with skills that are scarce in Singapore industries can each receive up to $300,000 in funding from the Capability Transfer Programme (CTP), said Manpower Minister Lim Swee Say in Parliament on Monday (5 March).
During the Committee of Supply debate for the Ministry of Manpower’s (MOM) budget, Lim said that the initiative – piloted by the MOM and Workforce Singapore (WSG) – will ensure that private sector companies have funding support of between 30 and 90 per cent to assist them in engaging such foreign specialists.
Lim told the House, “We need to speed up the development and transfer of new and better global capabilities to our local workforce… not just in high tech, high profile and high impact sectors but in as many sectors as possible, and as quickly as possible.”
First announced last year, the CTP aims to elevate the global expertise of the local workforce through the recruitment of foreign specialists. The amount and period of funding – which can span months or years – will be determined by WSG to ensure that companies, associations or professional bodies can drive their projects on an industry level.
Companies that wish to send their local workers to be trained overseas can also get funding support under the initiative. The areas eligible for funding include salary support for foreign and local specialists, airfares and equipment cost.
“Specialists have to do more than just training but also coaching and working alongside our local workers, be their trainer, mentor and guide. Cost can often be the obstacle, especially for our local enterprises, so under the CTP we will co-fund the cost of this capability transfer, ” said the Minister.
If $300,000 is not sufficient for a company to engage foreign specialists, a higher funding figure can be considered on a case-by-case basis, said the Minister.
For example, the engineering industry was supported by the CTP programme over 15 months to install high speed, high precision machines and to bring in German specialists to train local trainers who can in turn train employees from various companies.
In reply to Workers’ Party chief Low Thia Khiang, who asked how MOM can ensure that the CTP benefits the sector as a whole rather than a single company, Lim said, “I would like to assure him that in our project evaluation, we will consult sector agencies and be guided by the various Industry Transformation Maps to ensure that these capabilities will be relevant and able to strengthen our future competitiveness. ”
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