Chairman Sir,
The ESC and the Budget seem to focus heavily on helping companies which are already successful to become Globally Competitive Companies.
In its drive to identify and assist these promising medium-sized companies, has the Government forgotten about local small businesses like sundry shops and car workshops? Would such small enterprises have a place in the new economic landscape, or will they be crowded out or gobbled up by bigger fish?
What is the Government doing to help local small businesses, especially those in sunset industries, to become more competitive and viable in the new economy?
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The Economic Strategies Committee has put forth recommendations on Singapore being a Smart Energy Economy.
As electricity is a modern necessity, it is of paramount importance that it is reliable, pollution-free and affordable.
As regards reliability, the ESC recommends that in the medium term, Singapore consider importing coal and electricity to diversify our energy sources, so as to free up land in Singapore. I would like clarification on the pros and cons of relying on imports and thus becoming less self-reliant for our energy needs. Which are the countries we are likely to import electricity from? Will there be additional risks to our energy security?
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Since the year 2000, Singapore has spent $33 billion on R&D, also referred to as the Gross Domestic Expenditure on Research and Development, or GERD. Of this, about $12 billion was funded by taxpayers.
I agree that it is necessary for Singapore to invest heavily in R&D for our nation’s future. However, it is critically important to measure the output and impact of our R&D investments to ensure that it is money well-spent.
This is admittedly not an easy task. The results from research may take years to materialise, and some R&D may be undertaken for strategic reasons, the benefits of which may not be easy to quantify. Nevertheless, any public spending needs to be accounted for.
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Divorced mothers of lower income face challenges in housing.
To be eligible for rental flats, one’s household income has to be below $1,500. This puts mothers who earn slightly more at a distinct disadvantage.
I came across a divorced mother who earns $1,600 working for a statutory board. She has care and control of 2 children attending primary school. Having sold the matrimonial home after the divorce, she is currently staying with her children in 1 room with a relative temporarily. However, she would have to move out very soon as the relative is getting married.
This lady wishes to purchase a HDB resale flat but requires a HDB loan. She has additional income from giving tuition and receives maintenance from her ex-husband. As she also has some cash and CPF, there is reasonable basis that she will be able to repay a HDB loan for a 4 room flat, especially since she can easily rent out one room as well.
HDB rejected her application for a loan, saying that the maintenance payments and potential income from renting out a room had to be disregarded. As for the extra income from tuition, they needed a longer track record of at least a year for assessment.
What choices do mothers like her have? Renting a flat in the open market costs $1,500 or up. Renting a room is simply too small for her and her 2 children plus their school books and belongings. Such a cramped arrangement may lead the children to stay out more, aggravating the inter-generational effects of the divorce.
Can HDB have wider criteria in assessing loans for divorcees with children? It seems a shame to dampen the drive of mothers like the one I mentioned.
(Note: this speech was delivered in Parliament on 5 Mar 2010.)
Chairman Sir,
It was reported by the Straits Times that the number of homeless people has doubled. When I read the report, I was thinking whether this is more a social problem or a housing problem?
My own experience from Meet-the-People sessions is that it may be less a social problem and more of a housing problem. This is because while many of these cases of residents who lost their homes do involve dysfunctional families, quite a number are still financially viable and could afford to stay together as a family if they could afford the rental of a house. Many ended up without a home because of strict HDB rules on rental housing and obtaining HDB subsidized housing loan.
I understand HDB’s housing rules are to ensure economic benefits given to citizens are equal and not abused and thus resisted providing HDB rental flat and housing loan at below market rates.
I am concerned that such a position could create more homeless Singaporeans which could unwittingly breed a segment of our society who become bitter and alienated from their country which seem to care so little about them when they fall into bad times.
The HDB’s proposition for those who are unable to purchase a HDB flat or to qualify for a HDB rental flat is to seek help for accommodation from family members. The HDB should know well that with the size of HDB flats, most families do not have a spare room to accommodate another distressed close family member’s family. The end result would be strained relationships between family members which could adversely impact the family structure as a basic unit of our society. Is the creation of more strained family relationships desirable?
I therefore urge the Government to seriously look into the problem and explore other housing options for such families.
Sir, how can we aspire to be a 1st World Country with a world class public housing programme if we have homeless citizens camped out in public parks?
(Note: this speech was delivered in Parliament on 5 Mar 2010.)
Sir, the ESC calls for ‘bold steps to enhance land activity, so as to gain the greatest economic benefits from land, but in land scarce Singapore, we cannot treat land solely for economic benefits.
We should guard against looking at all available resources from the economic benefit perspective. We must not forget the ultimate aim of any economic benefit derived from our policies will only be meaningful if the outcome is a better society with happier citizens.
Land is needed to provide for necessary social activities that carry low or no economic value. It provides community space for social interaction. One such example is wet markets and hawker centres.
Hawker centres have become a feature of Singapore and provided fairly inexpensive food for the people due to the relatively low rental. If we apply the principle of maximizing economic benefit from the land occupied by hawker centres and wet markets, these iconic features of Singapore would become super markets and food courts in no time.
The current trend of the Government to release land for tender by private developers to build and operate markets and hawker centres is worrying.
When private developers bid for the land for wet markets and hawker centres, they are out to maximize profits. In a competitive bidding exercise, especially during times of economic growth, private developers compete against one another to secure the tender. The highest bidder who is successful would need to recover their investments and recoup their returns through higher rentals charged to individual stall lessees. In the end, these high rentals tend to translate into higher prices which consumer would have to pay for their cooked food and market produce.
The Government should continue the practice of building markets and cooked food centres at new locations for NEA to operate, to ensure Singapore remains a liveable and at the same time affordable city.
(Note: this speech was delivered in Parliament on 5 Mar 2010.)
Tracking back the annual drug situation reports from 2002 to 2009, I have made the following tentative observations:
(a) The heroin situation has significantly deteriorated. From 2004 to 2006 when heroin only accounted for about 10% of arrests, the last 3 years has seen heroin arrests going up from 31% in 2007 to 58% last year.
(b) During the years when heroin abuse was lower, synthetic drugs were the drugs of choice. In these years, the arrests consisted largely of younger offenders, majority Chinese.
(c) Subutex abuse led to it being gazetted as a controlled drug. While CNB has been working to tackle subutex abuse, heroin abuse rose, showing clear displacement effects from subutex to heroin.
(d) In the last 3 years, Malays formed the largest ethnic group arrested. This coincided with the upsurge of heroin as the drug of choice.
(e) In the last 3 years, the age of offenders arrested was skewed towards the older offenders aged 40 and above. These years overlapped with the release of long term imprisonment cases for repeat drug abusers.
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In countries like the UK, electoral boundary revisions are carried out by an independent Boundary Commission under the charge of a High Court Judge. Proposed boundary changes are also open to public scrutiny and objection. In Singapore, however, the boundary revisions are done by a committee chaired by the Cabinet Secretary, reporting to the PM. Sir, despite my belief that the PMO should not be in charge of boundary review, the focus of my cut is how the current process may be improved for transparency and accountability.
I would like to touch on 2 points: first, the timing of the release of the report; second, the contents of the report.
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Each year, the government has certain GDP growth targets and plans the Budget and policies around it. This year, the government has put in place a productivity target recommended by the Economic Strategies Committee.
Whatever measure is used, the ultimate aim of growing our economy must be to forge a higher quality of life for all our citizens. Though not everyone has the same talents and capabilities, our growth must provide every person with a good standard of living and a sense of physical and economic security. We may be a small country geographically, but within our borders, citizens should feel at home and valued as persons and not just for economic contributions.
Speaker Sir,
The Economic Strategies Committee (ESC) calls for a “clear shift” to sustain our future economic growth on skills, innovation and productivity rather than on expanding the labour force. Such ideas are not new.
It was recently reported in The Straits Times that notable economists, including University of Michigan professor Linda Lim, have questioned Singapore’s obsession with GDP growth and suggested that more thought be put into whether this growth is ‘good’, and who it benefits.
The report also stated that: “Fifteen years ago, Nobel Prize-winning Princeton economist Paul Krugman caused a mild sensation by warning that while Singapore’s headline growth numbers were impressive, its total factor productivity – the efficiency with which people, capital and land are combined to produce goods and services – was among the lowest in the world.”
Although this Government has always considered Singapore as a small and unique nation, its fiscal measure, so far, has been fairly conservative. For Budget 2010, the Government is relying again on its own conventional wisdom to address the fundamental problems caused by the implementation of its policies for the past decade.
The ‘growth at all costs’ strategy initiated since the late nineties has resulted in the present state of our economy where low wage earners are growing dependent on state-funded handouts to subsist, and productivity is stagnating at 1 percent from an influx of cheap foreign labour.
Furthermore, social stress is on the rise and threatening to move our ever-changing society closer to the brink of polarization. The level of comfort in our public infrastructures like transport and healthcare is also declining under a population spike of almost a million people in the last decade with 75 percent of the increase arriving in the last 4 years alone.
