News In Brief - Jan 2012

Worries over increasing labour costs particularly in the construction industry as China/India boom. Construction bosses tell of ten and even twenty percent increases in the last six months alone. With only slightly better wages on offer here, Singapore is becoming less enticing for the foreign work-force. The new frontier is Myanmar. In China too recruitment is shifting to more remote regions. "Instead of its usual "hunting grounds" of Sichuan, Henan and Hubei", the remote villages of Jiangsu are being scouted. Mechanization and automation have been adopted wherever possible; still operators are needed for the machinery, the bosses explain; and machines not always the best options in some areas.
         Page one PM Lee hoping for the usual boost to native birth rates in the forthcoming year of the Dragon. (PM Lee Hsien Luong himself is a Dragon.) Judging by the scale of the prostitution industry, it is not copulation per se that is going out of fashion here. Historic lows in the Total Fertility Rate: this last year up slightly to 1.20 from the all time nadir the previous year of 1.15.
         Suspicions too that financial incentives and other stimuli are insufficient; the "social climate" identified as an area of concern. The Government now in the unusual position of facing an opposition bloc of six in the new parliament.
         Slow news day otherwise on CNY Eve.