(Bloomberg) -- Singapore’s Minister for Trade and Industry Chan Chun Sing said the tightening in foreign worker rules announced in the budget this week was a “surgical” move targeted at specific industries to make the labor market more sustainable.

The aim is “to make sure that the Singapore foreign manpower dependency is on a sustainable trajectory,” Chan said in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s Haslinda Amin in Singapore. “We are not going to have an unlimited number of foreign workers in Singapore but what we have and what we want is a higher quality of foreign workers.”

Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat said in his budget speech on Monday that quotas for foreign workers in services industries, such as food and retail, will be lowered from next year to help boost productivity and curb labor growth.

Chan also said Singapore is positioning itself to remain neutral and open to both the U.S. and China amid mounting tensions between the world’s two largest economies.

To contact the reporters on this story: Michelle Jamrisko in Singapore at mjamrisko@bloomberg.net;Melissa Cheok in Singapore at mcheok2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Nasreen Seria at nseria@bloomberg.net, Shamim Adam

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