By Jaime Lee and Chow Penn Nee

SINGAPORE-BASED firms find it easiest to keep foreign talent here on local terms compared with other Asian countries, a survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) showed.

And with the expected economic slowdown, many companies also anticipate that foreign talents are now likely to take up 'local- plus' terms - which are less attractive than expatriate terms - as the job market could come under threat, said PwC yesterday.

PwC interviewed human resource professionals of 105 Singapore-based companies between March and July this year.

Of these, 59 per cent have their regional headquarters in Singapore, while 24 per cent have their global headquarters in Asia.

These include home- grown firms such as Temasek Holdings, CapitaLand, Neptune Orient Lines and Keppel Corporation, as well as multinational companies such as 3M Singapore, ING Bank's Singapore branch and Philips Electronics Singapore.

Some 79 per cent of these firms said they considered Singapore the easiest place to localise foreign talent in the survey released yesterday.

PwC defined localisation as changing an expatriate remuneration package to one that is similar for a local hire.

This is known sometimes as 'local-plus' terms and could mean removing benefits for education and housing that expatriates receive, said James Clemence, partner of PwC's International Assignment Services, which conducted the survey.

'It's a halfway house between expatriate and local' packages, Mr Clemence told reporters at a media briefing.

PwC said this was testament to Singapore's drive to attract foreign talent through government initiatives such as the Personal Employment Pass and Singapore's competitive personal tax rates and concessions.

About half of all the companies surveyed said that they anticipated more localisation taking place.

With the financial markets starting to sour, employers could wield more bargaining power, said Mr Clemence.

'It's very difficult to move someone from an expatriate package down to a local package. Take away the housing, the schooling, it's a difficult task to persuade employees to stay.'

But with the slowdown, particularly in the financial services segment, 'the employer is going to become the one in the driver's seat' if the crisis continues, he said.

But companies also faced challenges such as monitoring the benefits of cross-border moves. Just 9 per cent of respondents said that they tracked the return-on-investment of cross-border moves.

This article was first published in The Business Times on October 15, 2008.