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http://www.asiaone.com/News/AsiaOne%2BNews/Singapore/Story/A1Story20090321-130082.html
SINGAPORE, March 21, 2009 (AFP) - Singapore, which is facing its
worst recession in history, needs foreigners to survive in the
long-term, founding father Lee Kuan Yew said.
The city-state is not reproducing itself fast enough and the
government has in recent years opened its doors to attract more
talented migrants to avert a serious population shortage.
"Without new citizens and permanent residents, we are going to
be 'The Last of the Mohicans'. We will disappear," Lee, 85, told an
audience at a local university late Friday.
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e is the country's first prime minister and remains an
influential figure. He is an adviser in his son Prime Minister Lee
Hsien Loong's cabinet with the title minister mentor.
Singapore needs a fertility rate of 2.1 babies per woman to
maintain its population naturally but a string of incentives
including monetary ones to encourage Singaporeans to have babies
has failed to make an impact.
A report released this month by the Department of Statistics
showed 39,935 babies were born in 2008, well short of the 60,000
births the country needs each year.
Singapore has a population of 4.84 million, including about one
million foreigners who work in the country and their families.
The local economy is projected to shrink by up to 5.0 percent in
2009 and the elder Lee told the audience at the university it may
take up to six years to recover in a worse-case scenario.
In a sign of how tough times are, Singaporeans trained as
engineers are looking for jobs such as bus drivers once shunned by
locals, The Straits Times reported Saturday.
