By DPA,
Singapore: Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong Saturday called on couples to have more children as the city-state’s birth rate slipped to its lowest level in 2009.
“Despite all our efforts, we are producing far too few babies,” Lee said in a message marking Sunday’s start of the lunar Year of the Tiger.
“Last year, we were short of at least 10,000 babies just to replace ourselves,” he added.
Lee especially urged ethnic Chinese to dismiss their superstitions against children born in a Year of the Tiger.
The total fertility rate of Singapore, which has a population of 4.9 million people, dropped from 1.28 children per woman in 2008 to 1.23 last year, said Lee, a number far below the replacement level of 2.1.
For Singapore’s Chinese majority the birth rate had been even lower as it fell to 1.09 last year, he added.
Lee warned that some Chinese couples preferred not to have children during a Year of the Tiger, which is regarded as holding risks and uncertainties.
“It is one thing to encourage ourselves with the traditional attributes of the zodiac animals,” said Lee.
“But it is another to cling to superstitions against children born in the Year of the Tiger, who are really no different from children born under other animal signs,” he added.
In its efforts to counter the demographic challenges of low fertility and an ageing population, Singapore’s government has launched several campaigns and offered incentives to provide a more pro-family environment for its citizens.
In his New Year message, Lee stressed that Singapore had to raise its productivity to sustain economic growth of 3 to 5 percent over the next decade.
“This means a significant shift in our strategy, from merely expanding to upgrading the economy,” said Lee.
Lee supported a recent recommendation of the Economic Strategies Committee, saying that Singapore had to moderate the inflow of foreign workers, who currently represent one third of the city-state’s workforce.
“We are at a turning point in our economic development,” said Lee, “We cannot continue importing foreign workers as liberally as before, because we will run up against space constraints.”
Although economies worldwide had largely stabilised, there were still risks in the Year of the Tiger, warned Lee, citing the financial crisis in Greece as one example.
“Such events far away can hurt Singapore, because we are so open and globalised,” he said.