Current Number of Total Applications and Approved Applications for Employment Passes and Student Visas

35 Assoc Prof Jamus Jerome Lim asked 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.

Mrs Josephine Teo: 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.

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 the majority of applications submitted meet the criteria for consideration and are approved. For this reason, the application approval rate is not a meaningful indicator.

MOM does not process Student Pass applications. The data on Student Pass applications reside with MHA.