Somewhat surprisingly, Hong Kong’s chief executive comes in second place.
The best-paid top government official in the world is Singapore Prime Minister Lawrence Wong – and by a very long shot.
According to a graphic released Friday by Visual Capitalist, the newly appointed leader of the city-state receives $1.6 million in annual compensation. In a distant second place, at least in monetary terms, Hong Kong chief executive John Lee gets $695,000.
Some History
The fact that the two leaders of the two regional hubs are so well paid is nothing new, and in the case of the city-state, has some history behind it.
Singapore’s erstwhile legendary founding father and first prime minister Lee Kwan Yew was an avowed disciple of higher pay for civil servants, as a speech from 2000 shows, saying it had to keep abreast of the private sector if the government wanted to remain a capable one.
More than the US
Still, that doesn’t change the optics or the fundamental fact that Singapore’s leader gets more than quadruple the pay of the US president ($400,000 a year) and triple what members of the Swiss Federal Council take in ($530,000) during their one-year terms as president of the confederation.
In Hong Kong, senior civil servant pay isn’t as embedded as a deeply held belief or governing principle as it is in Singapore, although it is also nothing new. However, it might come under increasing challenge in the future, given the furor over the taxpayer money being spent on ex-leader Carrie Lam’s office rent at an upscale mall, as a recent «Hong Kong Free Press» article indicates.
Endless Forwarding
Still, statistics and figures like those provided by Visual Capitalist are probably doing the rounds in the depths of the statistic departments of both financial hubs, likely in the same way that private sector CEO figures get bandied about internally with brief, one-line quips about the actual effectiveness, or lack of it, of the top managers.
But even as the less well-paid functionaries in Hong Kong and Singapore huddle together and lick their wounds while updating formulas on endless reams of Excel sheets, they can take comfort in the fact that they are probably doing a great deal better there than anywhere else, at least from the point of view of pay.
