Foreign Worker Levies Collected and Workfare Income Supplement Disbursed

Mr Gan Thiam Poh asked the Acting Minister for Manpower (a) what are the amounts of foreign worker levies collected and Workfare Income Supplement disbursed respectively for the past two years; and (b) whether the foreign worker levies have funded the Workfare Income Supplement to benefit Singaporean workers.

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Mr Tan Chuan-Jin: The total foreign worker levies collected were S$2.5 billion for the Financial Year 2011 and S$1.9 billion for the Financial Year 2010. Similar to other sources of Government revenue, the foreign worker levies are not ringfenced for any specific purposes. All Government revenue collected would go into the Consolidated Fund used to fund Government expenditures in general. This includes the Workfare Income Supplement (WIS) scheme which the Government introduced in 2007 to supplement the income and CPF savings of older low-wage workers while encouraging work. For work done in 2010 and 2011, about S$400 million has been given out in WIS for each work year.

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