Josephine Teo

Josephine Teo nee Yong Li Min 杨莉明
Party Affiliation	PAP
Current Role	• MP for Jalan Besar GRC •
Past Roles	• MP for Bishan–Toa Payoh GRC •
Others	• •
Background
Education	• • • •
Personal Details
Age	56
Others

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Born on 8 July 1968, Josephine Teo nee Yong Li Min is currently MP for Jalan Besar GRC since 2020.

• from 2024 - appointed Minister for Digital Development and Information
• from 2018 to 2021 - Minister for Manpower
• from 2017 to present - Second Minister for Home Affairs
• from 2021 - Minister-in-charge of the Cyber Security Agency and Smart Nation Initiative

For a full list of positions, see PARL link.

She first contested in the GE2006 in Bishan–Toa Payoh GRC as part of a five-member PAP team, but it was an uncontested walkover. Thereafter she moved to Jalan Besar GRC in 2020 and retained her MP post.

Early Life and Education

• Dunman High School
• Raffles Junior College
• 1990 - graduated from the National University of Singapore (NUS) with a Bachelor of Arts degree
• 1991 - obtained a Bachelor of Social Sciences with honours
• 1992 - obtained a Master of Science degree in economics at the London School of Economics in under the Economic Development Board–Glaxo Scholarship Programme.

Controversies

NSmen's service cannot be "measured in dollars and cents"

• Feb 26 2015 - at a forum for public to give feedback on Budget 2015 organized by feedback unit REACH, one participant gave suggestion that national servicemen should be paid more.
• Josephine Teo said service for the country cannot be measured in dollars and cents.
• her comment attracted widespread public criticism, the most common being, why should the PAP and minister's contributions be measured in monetary terms but not so for NSmen? Why the double standards?
• by Mar 3, the CNA article was observed to have been removed

"You need a very small space to have sex" comment

• Josephine Teo oversees the National Population and Talent Division
• Oct 2016 - question was posed on whether young people are not getting their flats early enough to have children
  • potential chicken-and-egg problem: to qualify for the Parenthood Priority Scheme, which gives first-time married couples priority for flat application, they must be expecting or have a citizen child below 16
  • But to have a child, some say they need to have a flat first
• to which Josephine Teo replied, "You need a very small space to have sex."
• She was widely criticized as being childish, insensitive, and unrealistic

"Milk is milk" comment

• May 2017 - in the wake of high cost of milk powder, she declared in a Facebook post, "Milk is milk, however fancy the marketing"
• she further stated "I had no reason to pay more and would buy whatever was cheapest or on sale,"
• her post was criticized for being out of touch with reality, with public members clarifying that the "issue on hand is why are milk powders sold in Singapore are so much more expensive than other countries" and that the cheapest formulas are also more expensive than neighboring countries
• https://www.theonlinecitizen.com/2017/05/13/josephine-teos-comment-milk-is-milk-however-fancy-the-marketing-irks-parents/

Comment that no migrant worker demanded apology

• May 2020 - the massive outbreak of COVID-19 in dormitories, from 31 cases in April 2020 to over 15,000 in May, before more than doubling to 33,000 in June
• Lawrence Wong helmed the National Development Ministry and co-chairs the Multi-Ministry Taskforce tackling the spread of the Covid-19 virus.
• NMP Anthea Ong asked whether tbe authorities would apologise for the large number of COVID-19 cases in the dormitories.
• Josephine Teo's answer, "I have not come across one single migrant worker himself that has demanded an apology."
• she was widely labelled as aggressive and defensive for her responses

Allegations of conflict of interest and profiteering

• May 2020- allegations surfaced about corruption and profiteering about development of the Covid-19 community care facilities (CCF) such as the one by Surbana Jurong at Singapore Expo
• Josephine Teo's husband was Chief Executive Officer of Surbana Jurong back then
• MP Desmond Choo and Yaacob Ibrahim were also Surbana Jurong board members
• then-Minister for Manpower Josephine Teo instructed her lawyers to issue formal letters of demand to the two persons who made raised the claims to remove post and apologize, namely Jolovan Wham and Donald Liew
• however, she did not ask for damages and instead requested the two to make a donation of $1,000 each to the Migrant Workers' Assistance Fund
• A separate joint statement by MOH and MND said the Government had asked Singapore investment company Temasek to help set up a CCF for those with mild or no symptoms of Covid-19 and recovering patients as they believed Temasek had the necessary resources to do so at short notice through its subsidiaries, which includes PSA International, Singapore Technologies Engineering and Sheares Healthcare.
• statement added that the Ministry of Manpower and Mrs Teo were not involved in the selection of Surbana Jurong, nor were they involved in the process of managing the project costs.

Husband's appointment as CEO of SSTEC

• Mar 2021 - Keppel Corporation announced on 22 Mar the appointment of Teo Eng Cheong, Josephine Teo's husband, as the chief executive officer of the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City and Investment Development Co (SSTEC)
• SSTEC - a collaborative agreement between the Governments of China and Singapore to jointly develop an environmentally friendly city in China, namely Tianjin Eco-City started in Jul 2019
• Teo Eng Cheong was also appointed Managing Director of Keppel Urban Solutions on the same day, but he has been director of the corporate office at Keppel Corporation since 1 January in the same year.
• Teo Eng Cheong was previously chief executive officer (international) of Surbana Jurong Group since 2016 until Sep 2020
• he also held various posts in the government in the past, e.g. CEO of International Enterprise Singapore, and CEO of the Competition Commission of Singapore
• public comments swirled over whether his appointment was due to his "connections"

S$2.8B Laundering Case

• She mentioned a red flag that alerted authorities to this billion-dollar money laundering case and that in 2021, several suspicious transaction reports (STRs) were filed by financial institutions and other companies
• earlier speculations from both international and local news outlets raise possibility that the police operation was in Singapore orchestrated by China, which Josephine Teo dismissed as untrue
• However, MP Sylvia Lim noted some of the arrested and charged individuals were reportedly wanted by Chinese police authorities for their alleged involvement in organized crime activities, and asked whether Chinese authorities were assisting in the Singapore investigation
• Josephine Teo answered that intelligence exchange on suspicious transactions with foreign counterparts is routine but did not provide details
• when MP Sylvia Lim pressed further on whether Chinese police authorities were assisting Singapore in the investigation, she gave an indirect answer "it would not be unusual or unthinkable for us to be cooperating with other law enforcement agencies, not confined to one country China."

NRIC unmasking incident

• 19 Dec 2024 - at press conference, as Minister for Digital Development and Information, Josephine Teo, Second Minister for Finance Indranee Rajah and ACRA chief executive Chia-Tern Huey Min apologised multiple times for the anxiety caused.
• this followed massive public backlash when on 13 December, statements from ACRA and the Ministry of Digital Development and Information (MDDI) justified the unmasking as part of a broader policy shift to phase out masked NRICs, which were described as creating a “false sense of security.”
• Acra had made available full NRIC numbers in its free People Search function on its new Bizfile portal launched on Dec 9, sparking public backlash. The function was eventually disabled on Dec 13.
• over 500,000 queries were made on the Bizfile portal during 9-13 December 2024, before the People Search function was disabled. This surpassed the usual traffic of 2,000-3,000 queries daily
• However, the issue only came to public attention on 12 December, after former Straits Times editor Bertha Henson highlighted it in a Facebook post. Public outcry ensued as the full NRIC could be misused to access various services, authenticate SingPass, and personal data, in contravention of PDPC guidelines released in 2019
• Subsequently, MDDI and the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA) have blamed a misunderstanding of a July 2024 circular
• Repeated calls to make this circular public have gone unheeded
• A review of how the disclosure by ACRA came about and Government’s policy on the responsible use of NRIC number was led by Head of Civil Service Leo Yip, to be completed in Feb 2025
• The report was submitted to Senior Minister Teo Chee Hean on 25 February 2025 and only approved for public release by Prime Minister Lawrence Wong on 27 February.
• review's conclusion was the unmasking of full NRIC numbers on the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority’s (ACRA) Bizfile portal was the result of miscommunication and coordination lapses, rather than deliberate wrongdoing, but also highlighted several shortcomings on MDDI and ACRA's part
• when questioned in detail by MPs in parliament, Teo Chee Hean acknowledged that miscommunication between ACRA and MDDI was a key factor in the incident, and that officers and senior management involved will face a range of measures, including counselling, retraining, and reductions in their performance grade and performance-based payments.
• however, public have criticized this move as pushing the blame to lower ranking civil servants while the people at the top who approved the policy, namely the ministers, shake off accountability with just an apology.

Comment that KPIs not sole measure of performance

• Mar 2025 - SPH Media Trust (SMT) failed to meet several key performance indicators (KPIs) for FY2024/2025
• previously government had earmarked S$260 million for SPH Media Trust in last year’s budget and set specific KPIs to assess its performance
• as SMT did not meet all its targets related to digital reach, youth engagement, vernacular reach, and average time spent on its platforms. As a result, it will not receive the full committed funding but will receive pro-rated incentives
• MP Pritam Singh asked for clarity on how the ministry set these KPIs and SMT's performance, as well as data on print and digital subscriptions. He also questioned the transparency in the presentation of government subsidies for SMT and that there should be a clearer way for the public to track these funds, given the substantial size of the subsidy.
• she then defended the government’s approach, stating that KPIs are not the sole measure of success.
  • Quote: "Despite not meeting all their KPIs last year, SPH Media did not ask to lower their targets. They are determined to maintain their reach and relevance with Singaporeans. In 2024, they maintained their strong overall reach at 70% of Singapore’s resident population, although youth and vernacular reach dipped. In line with the funding agreement, MDDI will pro-rate and award the Performance-Linked Incentives accordingly."

Personal Life

Josephine Teo is married to Teo Eng Cheong, the former Chief Executive Officer of Surbana Jurong (starting 1 January 2016), who is now Chief Executive Officer of Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City and Investment Development Co (SSTEC), and concurrently acts as Advisor on the China-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City matters within the Ministry of National Development of Singapore. The couple have twin daughters and one son.

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