Labour chief Lim Boon Heng, who is also a government minister, said the impacts of the outsourcing and lay-offs would be balanced by job creation in other areas, according to radio station NewsRadio 93.8FM.

"While there is restructuring in some sectors, there is growth in other sectors," Lim, the head of the National Trades Union Congress, told local media at a charity event.

"There is some economic restructuring but mostly they are 100 (jobs lost) here, 200 there. So there are not huge retrenchments and the job creation in the past two quarters has been very promising."

According to the radio, Lim said he expected the jobless rate to fall to at least 4.0 percent by the end of the year.

Outsourcing hit the headlines here last week when government-controlled Singapore Airlines and its ground handling subsidiary, Singapore Airline Terminal Services, said they would outsource or retrench a combined 1372 jobs by the end of the year.

And the Sunday Times newspaper said the government was planning to speed up its outsourcing plans, with 12 major services in line to be contracted out.

The Sunday Times said the services being considered for outsourcing included security, project management, finance and accounting, legal work, information technology, training and call centres.

If private companies can deliver the services more cheaply and effectively, they will be hired to take over the work, according to the paper, which did not identify its sources but is closely linked to the government.

The report did not give the number of jobs that could be outsourced.

It separately quoted Finance Ministry figures showing that 220 government workers had been retrenched between February 2003 and June this year through outsourcing.

The ministry said the outsourcing had created S$24 million (US$14.2 million) worth of business for the private sector.

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