TR EMERITUS

News analysis: Singapore's historical low fertility rate not worrying yet, with clearer signs to come for Year of the Dragon- Today online, 25 February 2023. Today online quoted the above statement from 2 professors, NUS and SMU. I will be straight talking. I cling and even despise their intellectual ignorance and naviety at best and intellectual denial, dishonesty and/or political patronage at worst of those professors. I accept that despite being better educated, still, birth rate among our Chinese child bearing aged women tend to dip more in the Tiger Year than other Chinese horoscope years but Singapore is not a pure Chinese society. I ask if our Eurasian, Indian and Malay communities also experienced a birth dip due to the Tiger Year? The answer is obvious. The harsh and hard fact is that our total fertility rate has been dropping for years and years and years under the pap government... and the pap government, despite being a financially very able government simply lacks the sense of urgency and the political will to tackle it by seizing the bull by the horns, so to speak. Anybody who totally believes and sucks official propaganda that our TFR which now stands at a very, very sorry 1.05 when the replacement rate is 2.1 is due to the Year of the Tiger lalala in 2022 is in the race to win the Singapore's Sucker of the Year Award 2023. I have commented much about our very, very sad TFR situation in the past. Instead of putting in real and serious money and efforts to turn the tide, the pap government opted to make up for our native birth rates plunge through immigration. In so doing, in the short term, the music plays on, laughters uninterrupted and wine still flows etc but in the longer term when many current and past pap ministars have left the scene or enjoying their millions elsewhere and in an increasingly uncertain world, Singapore and Singaporeans are likely, on balance, to pay dearly for its TFR blunder, pap government's incompetence and short-sightedness. Think.   Simon Lim      Read More →

In Parliament on Friday Indranee Rajah reiterated like a broken record the constant PAP refrain that we need more immigrants and new citizens, using the hook that TFR has now fallen to 1.05. In the best PAP traditions of ensuring that anything must be due to factors beyond the Government’s control while anything good is the result of the PAP’s superior foresight, she tried to blame it on last year’s Year of the Tiger. However the trend has been steadily downwards from the 1980s when it was already well below the rate of 2.1 required to maintain a stable population. In fact a rate of 1.3 in the absence of immigration would lead to a halving of population size in 45 years or so while a rate of 1.05 if sustained would mean a much faster population drop, possibly as few as 30 years. The PAP Government have always been sanguine about Singapore’s low birth rate and slow to adopt family friendly policies. Reform Party has since 2015 advocated paying mothers a taxable child benefit of $300 per child per month to the age of 18, an amount which should probably be increased to at least $400 now. In addition we have said preschool and university education should be free and all education fees abolished. LHL and the PAP have constantly said that such generous policies would bankrupt Singapore and that hard choices have to be made with limited fiscal resources. While this year’s Budget takes baby steps towards providing more help for families with children in the form of enhanced cash payments, they only last till the children are 6 and a half whereas support should be given till the child reaches adulthood. Furthermore the Child Development Account can only be used at approved institutions, such as kindergartens (where the PAP benefits directly through the PAP Community Foundation) and in paying for medical care at hospitals under the MOH Holdings umbrella. This is another way in which budgetary resources are channelled to Temasek and GIC as MOH Holdings’ revenues are excluded from the Budget and may be transferred to our sovereign wealth funds. Also the assistance is slanted towards richer parents because of the co-matching scheme in which higher savings in the account are matched by the Government. The parents who need the most help are those who are unlikely to have savings. The Government’s eugenicist underpinnings are also evident in the Working Mothers Child Relief Scheme. After much criticism from me, the PAP have finally listened. This Budget makes it slightly less a tax break for rich women by capping the maximum amount per child but it is still an unnecessary subsidy for the rich and not to the people who are likely to need it most. Far better to provide a fixed cash benefit for all mothers with children which can be clawed back by making it taxable. In the context of the Government’s admitted staggeringly large surpluses of nearly $400 billion since 2005 and total public sector (including Temasek and GIC) surpluses of well over $1 trillion over the same same period, with total reserves of about $3 trillion, the Government’s indifference in the face of our plunging birth rate and unwillingness to do more than provide a few crumbs, magnified to appear a generous hand out by their media monopoly, looks absurd. The Government pretends that it spends a lot with the smoke-and-nirrors charade of the Net Investment Returns Contribution. However most of this is not real spending. Instead of the NIRC farce, we should easily be able to afford to spend another $80-150 billion a year on improving the lives of our citizens without putting a dent in the reserves, just slowing what should be their rate of growth. But then the PAP are imbued with a social Darwinian ethic that believes that Singapore benefits from ruthless competition among those at the bottom, though strangely this Darwinism does not apply to the elite’s wives, children and relatives who ensure they get the plum jobs, starting with the PM who has consistently hidden from Singaporeans for 20 years what he pays his wife and whose son works in the family company. No matter if the native population dwindles to zero because they can always be replaced by fresh blood from outside. The PAP says Singaporeans have to welcome foreign talent but then ensures that the dice are loaded against Singaporeans, and in particular male Singaporeans. PAP policies of ruthlessly extracting a surplus from Singaporeans while lying and deceiving have resulted in a situation where in the absence of immigration Singapore would rapidly become a ghost town. This makes the PAP claims to be safeguarding the reserves for future generations particularly nonsensical. Singaporeans need to ask themselves who precisely the reserves are being safeguarded for. Or, and this would be the ultimate cynical con trick by LHL and his Ministers, is this philosophy of social Darwinism a facade and the reality is that the reserves have disappeared, whether through mismanagement or even fraud. Until we change this Government we will never know.     Kenneth Jeyaretnam   About the author: I’m a Singaporean economist who became an opposition activist. I blog to provide an alternative to the porkies that the Pinkies tell. It just so happens that my alternative is the truth. That’s why I’ve never been sued in any civil or criminal court no matter how hard hitting my criticism. I’m quoted and interviewed and asked to speak across the world but largely censored in Singapore in an effort to silence my political opinions. The left hate me because they think I split their vote and because I eschew their outmoded economic models. Models that don’t work. The Right and the Conservatives hate me because I’m a liberal. I’m not sure what the middle think of me. I don’t think there are more than a handful of people in the middle, here in Singapore. I’m a Singaporean born and bred, dual heritage, my parents Singaporean established here before the State of Singapore was created. I’m not Eurasian. I read economics at Cambridge and could be broadly described as from the Keynesian school but I believe in interventions. I was formerly a successful hedge fund manager. After economics and politics my greatest interests are history, film and Makan. I run but I run so I can eat like a Singaporean.      Read More →

1. The Net Investment Return Contribution (NIRC) in Singapore is a portion of the investment returns from the country's reserves that the government uses to fund its annual budget. It was introduced in 2009 and is calculated as a percentage of the net investment returns of the Singapore government's past reserves. Under the NIRC framework, the government is allowed to use up to 50% of the expected long-term real returns on its net assets managed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and GIC Private Limited (GIC). The contribution is set at a minimum of 50% of the net investment returns on the assets. The NIRC is an important source of revenue for the Singapore government, and it helps to ensure the country's fiscal sustainability. It also helps to maintain the stability and security of the country's reserves over the long term. The NIRC provides a predictable and sustainable source of funding for the government's expenditures, which includes investments in infrastructure, education, healthcare, and other social services. 2. The Net Investment Return Contribution (NIRC) in Singapore is calculated based on the net investment returns, which include both realized and unrealized gains and losses. Realized gains or losses refer to the actual profits or losses that the government earns when it sells an investment, while unrealized gains or losses refer to the potential profits or losses that the government could earn if it were to sell an investment at the current market value. In the case of the NIRC, both types of gains and losses are taken into account when calculating the net investment returns. This approach provides a more comprehensive view of the returns generated by the government's investments and helps to ensure that the NIRC is based on the overall performance of the investments, rather than just the realized gains or losses. It's worth noting that the NIRC is calculated based on the expected long-term real returns of the government's net assets, and not on the actual returns earned in any given year. This approach helps to ensure that the contribution is stable and predictable over the long term, even if the actual returns fluctuate from year to year. 3. It is possible for the Net Investment Return Contribution (NIRC) in Singapore to be negative if there is a big loss in the market value of the investments managed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and GIC Private Limited (GIC). This is because the NIRC is calculated based on the net investment returns, which is the difference between the investment income and the investment expenses. If the investment income is negative, meaning that the investments have experienced losses, the NIRC can turn negative. In such a scenario, the government would not receive any contribution from the net investment returns, and it may need to draw on its reserves to fund its annual budget. However, it's worth noting that the NIRC is calculated based on the expected long-term real returns of the government's net assets, and not on the actual returns earned in any given year. This approach helps to ensure that the contribution is stable and predictable over the long term, even if the actual returns fluctuate from year to year. 4. The investments of Temasek Holdings are not included in the Net Investment Return Contribution (NIRC) in Singapore. The NIRC is based on the net investment returns of the government's past reserves, which are managed by two entities: the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and GIC Private Limited (GIC). Temasek Holdings is a separate entity from MAS and GIC and manages its own portfolio of investments. While Temasek Holdings is wholly owned by the Singapore government, its investments are not part of the government's past reserves and are therefore not included in the calculation of the NIRC. However, the investments of Temasek Holdings can still contribute to the overall economic growth of Singapore and generate tax revenues for the government. Additionally, Temasek Holdings can choose to invest in sectors and companies that support the government's strategic goals and priorities, such as investments in infrastructure, healthcare, and education.   Tan Kin Lian *Written with assistance of ChatGPT      Read More →