MONEY MATTERS: World leaders with best pay packages

Despite a whopping salary cut of 36 per cent, Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong remains the highest paid leader in the world, who takes home a salary of $1.69 million (about Rs 8.9 crore) per annum. He took the cut to appease public anger after the election in 2011.

The People's Action Party, which has ruled Singapore since independence in 1965, has been on the defensive since its share of votes in the 2011 election fell to 60 per cent, an all-time low.

Among the grave issues facing the PAP was ministers' high pay, which the government has justified as necessary to attract talent from the private sector and to deter the corruption that afflicts other Asian countries.

...

After the Singapore PM, the next in line is Hong Kong's Chief Executive Donald Tsang who earns $550,000 (about Rs 2.9 crore) per annum.

Loong makes more than 45 times the $36,200 (about Rs 19.1 lakh) annual salary, including allowances that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is paid.

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda gets about $513,000 (about Rs 2.7 crore) a year.

The Singapore PM draws more than four times as much as Barack Obama who gets $ 400,000 (about Rs 2.1 crore) a year as President of the United States.

In December, the Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard received a 31 per cent pay rise that boosted her salary to about $470,000 (about Rs 2.4 crore). With a hike of about $90,000, Gillard takes home a bigger pay cheque that Obama and United Kingdom PM David Cameron.

According to media reports, Kenyan PM Raila Odinga earns $ 427,886 (about Rs 2.2 crore). According to research this indicates that he earns 240 times more than the country's GDP per person. On that ratio, this makes him the world's highest paid politician.

France's President Nicolas Sarkozy earns just over 230,000 euros (about Rs 1.5 crore) annually.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who heads Europe's biggest economy, earns a gross salary of about 189,216 euros (about $246,750 or Rs 1.3 crore) a year.

Having set up his pre-election pledge to cut ministerial salaries by five per cent, British PM David Cameron took his own salary down to a humble £ 142,000 (about Rs 1.1 crore) per year.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin earns only $140,000 (about Rs 74 .1 lakh) a year. His official income statement published in the government newspaper, Rossiyskaya Gazeta, put his income over the past four years at 17.73 million roubles (about $559,100 or Rs 2.96 crore) from salary, a KGB pension and interest from bank deposits.

According to Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani asset statements last April, he earned a net annual salary of Rs 9.7 lakh.

Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai takes home an annual salary of $6,300 (about Rs 3.3 lakh).

...