“If we are not able to bring in immigrants to top up the population then we are in structural decline, and eventually the population will decline, the workforce will decline and Singapore will decline,” Wong said at the conference in Singapore on Monday.
As a small open economy, Singapore relies on foreign workers to meet its labor needs.
However, immigration rules have tightened in recent years as the government needs to strike a balance between protecting local jobs and ensuring sufficient resources to meet the needs of a growing number of migrants amid slowing economic growth.
The problem of negative population growth has been acute in Asian countries for a long time, which constantly creates a lot of challenges for their economic prospects. The situation is especially critical in Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong.