Singapore plans to amend an organ transplant law early next year so that kidney donors can receive financial compensation, The Sunday Times reported.

Under existing laws, it is illegal for donors to be given cash in return for giving up a kidney.

The plan to amend the Human Organ Transplant Act follows a recent high profile case involving a local business magnate who was jailed and fined for attempting to buy a kidney from an Indonesian man.

It was the city-state's first organ trading case.

"The ethical community, including the World Health Organisation, has clarified that it is ethical to compensate, so long as the compensation amount is not so big as to induce," Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan was quoted as saying by the paper.

A committee set up by the health ministry will work out the compensation scheme, said Khaw, speaking Saturday.

According to the Sunday Times, about 1,000 people in Singapore suffer from kidney failure every year.