Here is a contribution from a reader.  He describes how the government has manipulated HDB selling prices in order to yield high GDP figures.  He posits that it was done in 2 ways.  One, selected HDB estates like Sunset way are priced outrageouly high by HDB valuaers. Two, the private property price is currently being maintained at a high price by releasing very little new development sites for new development.

Download the article here.

Questions over the rights to air the English Premier League (EPL) as well as other sports channels will be raised when Parliament sits on Monday.   At least three MPs will ask the Acting Information, Communications and the Arts Minister about the recent successful bid by SingTel over the EPL rights.  Other questions tabled include concerns over the prices of HDB flats, the revenue generated from the Formula 1 night race, as well as the recent controversy over the Ms Singapore World pageant.

Source: CNA

Against the backdrop of such topics of ‘national concern’, Singapore’s key exports fell for the 17th consecutive month in September as demand from crucial markets including the US and European Union continued to decline.

Non-oil domestic exports fell 7.2 percent in September from a year earlier to 12.81 billion Singapore dollars, IE Singapore said in a statement.  The decline was sharper than the average 6.0 percent fall forecasted by analysts in a Dow Jones Newswires poll.  In all, total trade in September shrank 19.0 percent to 68.28 billion dollars from the same period a year ago. 

Let’s face it, despite the earlier evidence of recovery Singaporeans are not out of the woods yet.  Our parliamentarians are apparently unfazed, preferring instead to focus on sundry matters and other knick knacks.  

 

The biggest and most secretive gathering of ships in maritime history lies at anchor east of Singapore. Never before photographed, it is bigger than the U.S. and British navies combined but has no crew, no cargo and no destination – and is why your Christmas stocking may be on the light side this year.

Source: Mail Online

The Singapore government wants to tell new citizens/PRs that prices of their assets (ie properties) in Singapore will keep going up. They are not interested to let us know this.

I DON’T know about other Singaporeans but it frustrates me when I look at Singapore’s property market. Less than two years ago, the property market went wild, supposedly due to the en bloc frenzy.
Now, the property market is once again in crazy mode. This time, it is due to the “victory over one of the worst global recessions”. Or so I have been led to understand.

Source: Today

Singapore government is pushing up residential property prices because they are running out of ideas on how to sell land.

How else to get money into the economy? Service industries that rely on tourism are also affected by less party goers. Just look at F1.

So we bank our hope on IR and gambling, which will of course introduce vice and crime.

This is the result of the PAP led government that does not want to support and develop local talent to encourage them to be enterprising and innovative, because this government is just so insecure about its own power base.

Arthur

SINGAPORE: Manpower Minister Gan Kim Yong said it may be too simplistic to assume that reducing employer’s access to foreign workers will automatically lead to an improvement in productivity.  If Singapore is not careful in its policy response, it would instead create rigidity and distortion in the labour market. This would add costs to businesses and undermine their competitiveness.

Source: CNA

Mr Gan’s comments came a day after a call from NTUC Assistant Secretary-General Josephine Teo for the government to rethink its foreign workers policy in a bid to boost productivity.  She said the steady decline in productivity in recent quarters is an unintended consequence of the foreign worker policy.   Mr Gan said to achieve real sustainable growth in productivity, there is no alternative to concerted efforts by all parties and a lot of hard work on the ground. He stressed all stakeholders need to take ownership of the productivity challenge.

So what’s the root cause of this drop in productivity?  Well here’s the typical bureaucratic response - a joint taskforce involving the Manpower Ministry and the Trade and Industry Ministry has been set up to look at ways to enhance productivity in Singapore.  Maybe they should include the Ministry of Education – perhaps our system is not churning out workers who have the right skills and ethos?  Perhaps they should include the Prime Minister’s office too – the national productivity index should cover the productivity of civil servants.  How are these employees doing?  Don’t forget the Civil Service is the largest employer in Singapore.

I wait with bated breath for the taskforce’s findings.

 

A TOTAL of 12,760 jobs were lost in the first quarter, government data showed on Monday, pushing Singapore’s overall unemployment rate to a three-year high of 3.3 per cent.

Source:  ST

A total of 95,700 residents were unemployed in March.   Amd the number of people re-employed also fell, with only 51% of those retrenched in Q4 2008 re-employed by March 2009, compared to 70% in Dec 2008 and 67% in March 2008.   Elsewhere, retail sales suffered their biggest drop since 1999 as shoppers cut back on big-ticket items such as cars and furniture amid the city-state’s worst ever recession.

These residents and their families are probably worrying about their meals and the roof over their heads.  Youth Olympics, F1, Integrated resorts, 3G Army and the like probably mean nothing to them.  And don’t be fooled by the slight ’surge’ in the PC Show crowd - many may have ended up knee-deep in credit card debt.

Singapore expects its economy to shrink up to 9% this year, which would be its worst contraction since splitting from Malaysia in 1965.  The income gap may have eased in 2008 thanks to government aid, but these unemployed residents need immediate and sustained assistance now, in 2009, and in the months ahead.

President Barack Obama, trying to bolster an economy he says still has a “long way to go,” announced 10 projects aimed at accelerating job creation, according to the administration.

Source: Bloomberg

Obama tries to resuscitate the economy by coming out with new projects. On the other hand, our clueless, multimillion dollar PAP government instead pays private sector bosses using the job credit scheme, and hopes those people can come up with something.

SINGAPORE has lost its position as the world’s second most competitive economy to Hong Kong, falling to third place in the latest competitiveness rankings. The Republic was ranked second in 2007 and 2008. The United States remains tops, according to a world competitiveness report of 57 countries conducted by Swiss-based business school IMD. The economies are ranked according to how the nations and businesses are ‘managing the totality of their competencies to achieve greater prosperity’, said the IMD, which released the rankings on Wednesday.

Source:  The Straits Times

Among the Asean countries, Indonesia made a quantum leap, moving up nine places to 42nd, Malaysia went up a notch from 19th to 18th, and Thailand from 27th to 26th.   In East Asia, China fell three places to 20th. It did not perform very well in areas including international investment, business legislation, management practices, health and environment.   Taiwan also fell 10 place to 23rd place, from 13th a year ago, while South Korea moved up from 31st to 27th.

Too bad the reasons for our drop wasn’t reported, unlike what was done in the case for China.  That said, we can guess Singapore didn’t do well for international investment (Temask losses) and management practices (Temasek opagueness).

We help ourselves. Don’t expect others to help

Tom Wright painted a bleak picture of Singapore’s property sector going forward at The Wall Street Journal. His article ended with the following:
“I’m yet to see the light at the end of the tunnel [for Singapore],” says Mr. Tan, the high-end broker.
We would expect people to continue to dig the dirt and tell it to [...]



Our skin isn’t as thick as it should be

The Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) organised a seminar on March 4 to discuss Singapore’s political blogosphere.  Tan Tarn How, Senior Research Fellow and Research Assistant Tan Simin presented their paper on trends observed in the blogosphere.  As reported in the TOC, the researchers identified the following limitations:

The online-offline firewall, while somewhat alleviated by offline [...]



Singapore and Lee Kuan Yew – The answer to the African problem?

Recently, I followed a thread “Democracy and Economic Growth” which started in PoliticsForum.org.   Apparently, members there often question the role of democracy in a developing nation. “During the wave of democratization in Africa during the 90s, many people had renewed hope for the continent, immediately equating newly established democracies to economic growth. Are these democracies [...]



Tell Singapore government: Ask them a question or give a suggestion

We informed people about the “Tell Singapore Government” subsite and have received some interesting reaction at some forums.
See: 3in1 Kopitiam, Sam’s Alfresco Coffee, Singapore Kopitiam, SgForums
Our responses to some of the comments are listed below. If we are not answering some other specific questions, that is because we do not know how.
 

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