COMPASS Points for Chefs: Scoring a Singapore EP Application

Our Singapore hiring guide explains why an Employment Pass (EP) chef is a salary and points question. This page does the arithmetic. It goes through each COMPASS criterion as MOM publishes it, pulls out the Food & Beverage Services benchmarks, and shows with worked examples how a typical chef application scores. The examples use hypothetical salaries and headcounts to illustrate the calculation; the thresholds are MOM's.

1. How COMPASS works, in two stages

An EP application has to clear two stages:

1. Stage 1, the EP qualifying salary. For all sectors except financial services, this is S$5,600 a month at age 23 or below, rising with age to S$10,700 at 45 and above, for new applications before 1 January 2027.
2. Stage 2, COMPASS. The application needs 40 points, unless it is exempt.

A candidate who fails Stage 1 is not eligible, however many points they would have scored. The exemptions from Stage 2 are a fixed monthly salary of at least S$22,500, an overseas intra-corporate transferee, or a role of one month or less. For a restaurant chef, the realistic exemption is none of them, so the 40 points matter.

COMPASS has four criteria worth up to 20 points each, and two bonus criteria:

2. C1 Salary: the F&B benchmarks

C1 compares the candidate's fixed monthly salary with local PMET salaries in your sector at the candidate's age:

• 90th percentile and above: 20 points
• 65th to below 90th percentile: 10 points
• Below 65th percentile: 0 points

MOM publishes the benchmarks by sector and age each August. A restaurant would expect to fall under Food & Beverage Services, but check your organisation's actual classification on the myMOM portal, because the benchmarks differ by sector. Selected ages from the tables currently in force (new applications from 1 January to 31 December 2026), with the EP qualifying salary alongside:

Two things follow for 2026 applications. First, the EP qualifying salary sits above the F&B 65th percentile at every age, so any chef who clears Stage 1 automatically scores at least 10 on C1. Second, the qualifying salary sits below the 90th percentile at every age, so a chef paid the minimum gets 10, not 20. The gap is a few hundred dollars a month: S$301 at age 30, S$381 at 35, S$543 at 45 and above.

3. C2 Qualifications: why most chefs score zero

• 20 points: a degree-equivalent qualification from a top-tier institution on MOM's list (top 100 in the QS World University Rankings and other highly reputed Asian universities, Singapore's autonomous universities, and institutions recognised in a particular field and endorsed by a sector agency).
• 10 points: other degree-equivalent qualifications, including foreign qualifications comparable to a UK bachelor's degree, and professional qualifications on MOM's list endorsed by a sector agency.
• 0 points: no degree-equivalent qualification. MOM asks you not to submit such qualifications.

The culinary entries on these lists (released November 2025, for applications from 1 January 2026) are worth knowing:

• The top-tier list includes Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne as a Group B institution, earning 20 points for bachelor's degrees and above in faculties including Culinary Skills, Hospitality Management, Hotel Management, and Pastry & Baking.
• The degree-equivalent list, worth 10 points, includes culinary qualifications such as the ITE Paul Bocuse Technical Diploma in Culinary Arts, Temasek Polytechnic's Diploma in Culinary and Catering Management, Republic Polytechnic's Diploma in Restaurant and Culinary Management, Culinary Institute of America bachelor's degrees, National Kaohsiung University of Hospitality and Tourism's Associate Degree of Culinary Arts, and culinary diplomas from several Malaysian institutions.
• We found no Japanese culinary school or Japanese institution on the degree-equivalent list. Japanese universities do appear on the top-tier list, which only helps if the chef holds a degree from one of them.

A chef who trained through years in Japanese kitchens will, in most cases, score 0 on C2. Plan on it. If a candidate does hold one of the listed qualifications, that is 10 or 20 points you did not expect, and MOM requires verification proof of the qualification with the application if you are relying on those points.

4. C3 Diversity and C4 Local employment

Both are firm-level criteria, and both depend first on how many PMETs you have. If your organisation employs fewer than 25 PMETs, each scores 10 points by default.

Who counts as a PMET here is narrower than you might think. MOM counts foreign employees earning at least S$3,300 in fixed monthly salary, and local employees (citizens and PRs you pay CPF for) earning at least S$3,300 a month in CPF wages. Staff below that line are not counted at all. MOM's resident wage data for June 2024 put the median gross monthly wage of a cook at S$2,028 and a senior cook at S$3,425, so many kitchen roles sit below or near the line. The PMET count can be small even in a busy operation.

If you have 25 PMETs or more:

Two details matter for Japanese restaurant groups. For C3, nationality is taken from the passport, and PRs count by their nationality; a Japanese PR on your team adds to the Japanese share. For C4, the same PR counts as local. And if your local PMET share is at least 70%, you score at least 10 on C4 whatever your position in the sector. The Workforce Insights tool on myMOM shows both figures for your organisation.

5. C5 and C6: the bonuses

C5 Skills bonus. Up to 20 points for a job on the Shortage Occupation List. The current list, released November 2025 for applications from 1 January 2026, does not include restaurant chef as a shortage occupation. "Chef" appears only as qualifying work experience for an agritech role, alternative protein food application scientist, at firms in the agritech space. For a restaurant chef, plan on 0.

C6 Strategic Economic Priorities bonus. 10 points if your organisation participates in an eligible programme, at the discretion of the supporting agency. Most programmes are aimed at manufacturers, large investors and funded start-ups. Two are closer to hospitality:

• Singapore Tourism Board: selected grantees of the Business Improvement Fund or participants in the Singapore Tourism Accelerator with innovative, transformative projects, and grantees of TIP-iT leadership development.
• NTUC: organisations committed to local workforce development through NTUC's Company Training Committees or government-supported programmes.

The bonus lasts up to three years or the length of your participation, whichever is shorter. To renew it, you also need at least 10 points on C3 and on C4 in each of the three months before renewal.

6. Worked examples

The salaries and headcounts below are hypothetical, chosen to show the arithmetic. Thresholds are from MOM's 2026 tables. The candidate in each case is a Japanese chef with no degree-equivalent qualification, applying in 2026.

Example A: a single restaurant with 12 PMETs, chef aged 35

For a small employer, a chef without a listed qualification passes only by reaching the F&B 90th percentile for their age, unless the firm earns the C6 bonus. Here the difference between failing and passing is S$400 a month.

Example B: a group with 40 PMETs, 12 of them Japanese, chef aged 30

Japanese nationals are 30% of PMETs, so C3 scores 0. The outcome turns on C4.

In the second column, salary cannot rescue the application because C1 is already at its maximum. The options are the C6 bonus, a candidate with a listed qualification, or a different workforce profile. A group that keeps adding Japanese PMETs will find each additional EP harder, which is exactly what C3 is designed to do.

7. What changes on 1 January 2027

For new applications from 1 January 2027 (and renewals of passes expiring from 1 January 2028), the EP qualifying salary rises to S$6,000 at age 23 or below, up to S$11,500 at 45 and above. MOM released the matching C1 benchmarks in August 2026, and they apply to new applications from 1 January 2027 and to renewals of EPs expiring from 1 July 2027.

Comparing the two published tables age by age, the 2027 qualifying salary is at or above the F&B 90th percentile at every age. On MOM's figures, then, an F&B employer's EP candidate who clears Stage 1 in 2027 also scores the full 20 on C1. The entry price rises, but the C1 gap in Example A disappears: a small restaurant's chef with no degree reaches 40 points (20 + 0 + 10 + 10) at the minimum qualifying salary.

For larger groups, nothing changes on C3 and C4, so Example B's second column still fails in 2027.

8. Before you make the offer

1. Confirm your sector classification on myMOM is Food & Beverage Services.
2. Count your PMETs using MOM's S$3,300 definition. Fewer than 25 means 10 points each on C3 and C4.
3. If 25 or more, check the Japanese share and your local PMET position in Workforce Insights.
4. Check whether the candidate holds any qualification on MOM's C2 lists, and get verification proof if so.
5. Set the salary against both the qualifying salary and the 90th percentile for the candidate's age, for the year you will apply.
6. Run the Self-Assessment Tool, meet the Fair Consideration Framework advertising requirement, then apply.

If the numbers do not work for an EP, see the S Pass comparison in our Singapore guide, and for the wider picture on sponsorship, visa sponsorship for Japanese chefs.

General information from MOM's published criteria and tables as of September 2026, not legal or immigration advice. The worked examples use hypothetical salaries and headcounts to illustrate the calculation. MOM updates benchmarks and lists each year; confirm with MOM's Self-Assessment Tool before acting.