Singapore's government is planning to speed up its outsourcing plans with 12 major services in line to be contracted out, press reports said Sunday.
The Sunday Times said the services being considered for outsourcing include security, project management, finance and accounting, legal work, information technology, training and call centres.
If private companies can deliver the services more cheaply and effectively, they will be hired to take over the work, according to the paper, which did not identify its sources but is closely linked to the government.
The report did not give the number of jobs that could be potentially outsourced.
It separately quoted Finance Ministry figures showing that 220 government workers had been retrenched between February 2003 and June this year through outsourcing, which had created 24 million Singapore dollars (14.2 million US) worth of business for the private sector.
News of the latest outsourcing plans follows announcements by government-controlled Singapore Airlines and its ground handling subsidiary, Singapore Airline Terminal Services, last week that it would outsource or retrench a combined 1,372 jobs by the end of the year.
JOBLESS RATE TO FALL: Singapore's unemployment rate is likely to fall from 4.5 percent to 4.0 percent or better by the end of the year despite recent high-profile retrenchments and outsourcing, the government said Sunday.
Labour chief Lim Boon Heng, who is also a government minister, said the impacts of the outsourcing and lay-offs would be balanced by job creation in other areas, according to radio station NewsRadio 93.8FM.
"While there is restructuring in some sectors, there is growth in other sectors," Lim, the head of the National Trades Union Congress, told local media at a charity event.
"There is some economic restructuring but mostly they are 100 (jobs lost) here, 200 there. So there are not huge retrenchments and the job creation in the past two quarters has been very promising."