UNITED NATIONS HUMAN DEVELOPMENT INDEX (Singapore's ranking)

Dr Kanwaljit Soin asked the Minister for Trade and Industry why Singapore ranks only 43rd in the UN Human Development Index when we have one of the highest GDP in this region and what steps are being taken to improve Singapore"s ranking.

Mr Yeo Cheow Tong: The UN Human Development Index (HDI) is calculated based on the three components of longevity, knowledge and decent living standards. These are measured by life expectancy, a combination of adult literacy and mean years of schooling and real GDP per capita.

Singapore has been wrongly ranked 43rd place because UNDP has under-estimated Singapore's mean years of schooling at 4 years. Singapore has already pointed out to the UNDP that our mean years of schooling should be 7 years as estimated by our Department of Statistics. Based on this estimate, Singapore should be ranked 31st, just ahead of South Korea. UNDP has agreed to revise the figure in the next Human Development Report using the revised data from our Department of Statistics.

Our ranking should improve further with the reforms introduced in January this year to our education system. The new education system aims to provide all students with at least 10 years of education. This will reduce the number of pre-secondary school dropouts and increase the quality of our workforce by equipping each individual, especially those less academically able, with basic skills through technical education.

As far as the other components of the HDI are concerned, Singapore has done well with a high life expectancy at birth of 76 years and a high adult literacy rate of over 90%. Singapore's per capita GDP is also one of the highest in this region as observed by Dr Soin.