US President Barack Obama with Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong during a recent meeting in Beijing.

SINGAPORE: Singapore will do well if it manages to achieve an annual economic growth of 2 to 3 percent for the next five years, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong was quoted as saying.

The economy has reached a stage of its development where it is no longer possible to expand by 5 to 6 percent each year, Lee said in an interview with domestic media.

His comments came after data earlier this month showed that full-year growth for 2014 slowed to 2.8 percent from 3.9 percent in 2013, tempered by an uneven global recovery and lackluster exports.

“Domestically, we have to get used to what that means. Three percent (growth) per year means wages will go up correspondingly, gradually, year by year,” the Business Times quoted Lee as saying.

“Maybe not every year, but over four to five years you will see improvements if we are successful in our policies,” he said.

While Singaporeans have to accept a slower pace of growth, the government would do all it could to help people through this period of economic restructuring, Lee said.

The government has pushed to reduce a politically unpopular reliance on foreign workers, leading to a tight labor market which is affecting construction and retail sectors.

Singapore also introduced a series of property cooling measures over the past few years, triggering a 4 percent decline in private residential property prices in 2014, the first annual decline since 2008.

[wpResize]