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Written Answer by Minister for Manpower Mrs Josephine Teo on Total Applications and Approved Applications for Employment Passes and Student Visas

Foreign manpower

NOTICE PAPER NO. 415 OF 2021 FOR THE SITTING ON OR AFTER 11 MAY 2021

QUESTION NO. 704 FOR WRITTEN ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS

MP: Assoc Prof Jamus Jerome Lim

To ask the Minister for Manpower what is the current number of (i) total applications and (ii) approved applications, by geographic regions for (i) employment passes and (ii) student visas to Singapore.

Answer: 

  1. As can be obtained from MOM’s website, there are 177,100 Employment Passes (EP) in Singapore in December 2020, 9% lower than in December 2019.
  2. To help employers, MOM provides a Self-Assessment Tool (SAT) on its website to gauge the likelihood of an EP application being approved. It is not surprising then that majority of applications submitted meet the criteria for consideration and are approved. For this reason, the application approval rate is not a meaningful indicator.
  3. MOM does not process Student’s Pass applications. The data on Student’s Pass applications reside with MHA.