Parliament: Companies get 60 per cent of $400M annual training subsidies

Of the $400 million in direct training subsidies provided annually, companies in Singapore get 60 per cent of the amount, said Education Minister (Higher Education and Skills) Ong Ye Kung Tuesday (10 January).

Speaking in Parliament, Ong said as much as 40 per cent of the funding provided by the Ministry of Education and SkillsFuture Singapore is for training initiated by individual workers.

Ong was responding to a question from West Coast GRC MP Foo Mee Har on the progress made by companies in Singapore to invest in skills upgrading of their workers, and how they perform globally in the area.

Singapore compares favourably with a number of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, with 62 per cent of Singaporean workers participating in structured training compared with the average 55 per cent within OECD, Ong said.

The Republic ranks higher than Australia, Korea, Japan, France but is below the US, the UK, Finland and Sweden, he added.

“We are therefore not doing badly by international standards, and many companies do take the skills upgrading of their workers very seriously,” Ong said.

“But we can certainly do better – especially in encouraging SMEs to do so, and for more companies to offer structured in-house training and apprenticeship schemes.”