TR EMERITUS

As Budget 2023 approaches the PAP Government is beginning to soften the ground for tax increases to close an invented “funding gap”. Today an article on LHL’s personal propaganda channel, Channel News Asia, which until recently was actually under his wife’s direct control, said that Government spending as a percentage of GDP would rise to about 19 per cent to 20 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) between the financial years of 2026 to 2030, and possibly exceed 20 per cent by the end of the decade. The article highlighted that “Healthcare will be a key driver of this anticipated increase in national spending, which currently stands at 18 per cent of GDP”. This reiterates Lawrence Wong’s astonishing assertion in last year’s Budget that healthcare expenditures would rise from about $20 billion in 2022 to as much as $60 billion p.a. by 2030 a three-fold increase. Healthcare expenditures have grown ten-fold since 2006 yet Singaporeans have not seen a commensurate change in the quality of healthcare received. It is astonishing because even at current levels the Government appears to be spending more per capita (if one divides total healthcare expenditure by the number of Singaporean residents and exclude Employment Pass holders and foreign workers, all of whom should have healthcare paid for by their employers) than the UK spends on the NHS (see my article here as well as my questions to Lawrence Wong which he refuses to answer). If expenditures rise to $60 billion, Singapore would then be spending some $15,000 per Singaporean resident or nearly $17,000 if citizens alone are the relevant criterion (since arguably PRs should be required to pay for health insurance). This is a staggering amount particularly as all treatment under the NHS is free at the point of delivery and prescriptions are heavily subsidised (and free for those over 60 or suffering from chronic conditions. The NHS is far from perfect and long waits for beds and ambulances show that it is severely underfunded but similar or worse delays seem to have become the norm in Singapore. As usual the PAP tell only half truths or outright lies. We see the expenditure side, which appears to be inflated, perhaps grossly, but not the revenue that the Government collects from Singaporeans for all medical treatment. It claims treatment is subsidised but charges can still be substantial and despite Medisave balances having reached a whopping $110 billion and still rapidly growing as well as the Medishield insurance scheme being in substantial surplus, Singaporeans are still required to pay out of pocket (which for most is only 80% or less of what they earn after deduction of CPF) for medical treatment. The Government hides the revenues collected from Singaporeans in shadowy private companies, grouped under MOH Holdings, whose accounts are hidden behind a paywall. Why are the accounts not easily accessible to Singaporeans? The revenues collected should be shown in the Budget since more than half of MOH’s expenditure goes to these entities in the form of grants and subventions. Yet year after year the Budget is passed and our current crop of Opposition MPs are silent on this apparent fraud. Then there is the fakery of the Net Investment Returns Contributions (NIRC). These are shown growing steadily year after year, to reach $22 billion in 2022. The PAP highlight this growth to demonstrate to Singaporeans that they are supposedly receiving a growing dividend from the reserves and that this shows a wise and prudent government harvesting a surplus from you but investing it to benefit you. Strangely the growth in NIRC almost seems to mirror the increase in healthcare expenditures, from which Singaporeans have seen little benefit. I have highlighted for many years that the NIRC is a fake smoke-and-mirrors exercise since it has been matched almost entirely by contributions to endowments and trust funds. In some years the amount set aside for endowments and trust funds has been more than the NIRC contribution, though in the last two Budgets this has decreased, probably because I have drawn attention to it so often. The Finance Minister has been creative at inventing new funds to squirrel away money in such as the $5 billion allocated in recent years to the Coastal and Flood Protection Fund and to the construction of Changi Airport Terminal 5. These are all long term projects where money will be spent over several years often far into the future if at all. For example Tharman allocated $8 billion to the Pioneer Generation Fund back in 2014 but only about $200-300 million has been spent per year and the Fund still stands at some $7 billion or so. This is not current spending and for the Government to classify it as such is false to the point of being fraudulent. I have also raised concerns that the Government might be making Singaporeans pay twice for the same expenditure by putting expenditures from these funds through the Budget again as current spending. Finally (for now at least though doubtless there are other frauds and subterfuges being used to artificially inflate spending and hide resources from what the Government views as greedy and unworthy Singaporeans) we there is the HDB subsidy scam which I have recently highlighted.By overpricing the land sold to HDB (easy to do when you own all the land) and then giving a fake generous subsidy to Singaporeans paid for by a grant from MND to HDB the Government channels money to Temasek and GIC through the Budget while at the same time loudly telling Singaporeans how generous it is and how grateful they should be. The grant given to HDB to cover its loss on the cost of the land was $5 billion in 2022 (though this covers future losses on sale as well so it is clear that the usual PAP accounting sleight of hand is going on and HDB’s true loss may be much less). When all these scams are added up, the fake “funding gap”, used as a justification for raising taxes, disappears and in fact the Budget should be in substantial surplus, even without considering the wider Government surplus which should include earnings from land sales as well as from Temasek, GIC and MAS. I have calculated that the total financial reserves should be at least $2-3 trillion, possibly more. This of course does not include the value of the land. Instead of the bogus NIRC, which seems to be largely a transfer from one pocket to another, whether matched by transfers to endowments and trust funds or through bogus rising healthcare expenditures that do include revenues. Singaporeans should not be fooled by Budget 2023, which will be another fake exercise in hiding resources from Singaporeans while proclaiming that taxes need to go up to cover bogus “funding gaps”. They should demand a change of Government whose first task will be to assemble a team of forensic accountants to go over the books with a fine tooth comb (taking rather more than the 100 man years the late President Ong Teng Cheong was told it would take) and finally solve the mystery of why for 50 years the Government has adeptly extracted a massive surplus from Singaporeans but given nothing back.   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 →

I’ve found myself in a position where I’ve had to doll out advice to people on networking. As with everything related to “career,” I was a little hesitant to offer advice, since I never had the chance to build much of a career. However, since I have had the opportunity to meet people from all walks of life, I thought I would share one or two thoughts. Interestingly enough, my philosophy on networking is shaped by my dad. Although, we’ve never had much “buddy time,” he’s left me with a few nuggets of wisdom that have proved invaluable. Perhaps his greatest nugget came from a discussion about investment. He said he was never good with investing in investments (stocks, bonds, properties etc.) but he “invested in people.” He gave the example of how he nurtured a rookie in an advertising agency, who had then become very senior in a bank and that former rookie returned the favour by getting him appointed as director of photography on a shoot, over possible objections of the ad agency. This bit of wisdom made me very aware that the worst thing one could do was to be friendless. A person who has no friends finds it a lot more difficult to survive. Money can always be earned but you need people to allow you to earn it. So, what type of friends should one have? Well, when it comes to the social ladder, you should ensure that you have friends or at least the people who care about you enough to ensure that your survival. The best place to start is usually at the top of the ladder. Boss management is one of the least talked about skills in management school and yet it is one of the most important. A good boss can open doors and bring you places. He or she can show you how to get your thoughts sorted out to get through certain situations. How do you make friends with the people on top? I think of my uncle, who was once my boss. His classic line on labour division was “My job is to look pretty in front of the client and the rest of you have to make sure I look pretty.” Sensible bosses will want people who make them look good to rise with them. The second area is the ability to bring in money. It the justification for bringing in and paying someone “x” dollars is easy when they are bringing in “y” dollars. So, in the time I’ve been someone else’s employee, I’ve worked on the principle that although it’s the boss’s business, I also need to ensure the boss has the ability to pay my salary. In life, I’ve been fortunate to have bosses or ex-bosses who have looked out for me. PN Balji is one of the names that comes to mind. Balji got me writing commentary when he ran Today and he also got me into “issues management” when we were at Bang PR. Interestingly enough, his greatest contribution to my life as a mentor was not being there – most notably when I worked for Saudi Embassy in 2006. We were supposed to go in on the job together and then he dropped out leaving me to handle what has clearly been the highlight of my interesting working life. There were others too. I think of Ed Ng, who was CEO SEA of GE Commercial Finance back in 2007. Although I never got the chance to build the relationship with GE that I hopped to, Ed has always been there as someone willing to help. There is also Girija Pande, the Chairman of Apex-Avalon. He pushed for me to work on ISAS’s South Asian Diaspora event. I didn’t get the job but given that I was a one-man show and ISAS is part of the National University of Singapore (NUS – a government related institution), it was an achievement for a one man show to be given the time of the day to present a case. Just as its important to have friends on top, it’s also important to have friends by the side. Your contemporaries are people who have shared experiences with you. Most of us have the bulk of our friendships over here. Contemporaries are usually the guys we meet in school, university and at work. If you’re from a country with national service, you also meet some of your best friends here. Two of my best friends come from this period in my life. We’re very different in our backgrounds and all of us have gone onto to do different things. However, we’re still best of buds and I believe we have the shared experience of the military to thank. Corporate life is such that most of us are trained to focus on building upwards and sideway connections. Not much thought is given to downward connections. However, downward connections are in some ways the most important and these connections can be divided into two areas. Firstly, its those who are junior to you. Just as its important to have seniors to help you, you should also make it a point to have juniors to mentor. The guy who is your junior is likely to be a senior and one day, he or she may be in a position to help you in your later years. Dad had the example of a former agency rookie who became a managing director at a bank and passed him a job. It wasn’t just my dad. Mum often jokes that my inheritance from her, was her contact base. Her juniors had become editors by the time I entered the workforce. I became the only freelance media relations consultant with no agency or journalism experience who could pick up the phone and get through to the editor. Juniors who may become seniors are only one group of downline connections. The other group are those whom you might call the group that will remain in the downline. These guys are often unnoticed but unbeknown to the rest of us, hold certain powers. PN Balji made the point that one should always befriend security guards and secretaries. His friendship with a security guard a client’s premise always ensured there was parking. Secretaries hold access to bosses. Offend a secretary and chances are he or she will find a way of ensuring that the boss is too busy to talk to you. The key is to never think of people as “low level” and to always take care of them. One of my greatest examples comes from one of my logistics providers, who has a group of Chinese-speaking guys who help him with his work at the ports. When he sees them, he sees to it that they are well fed and have beer. Look after people and they will look after you. The guys in the downline have an ability to find solutions to a myriad of problems. In the US army, its said that the best way for an officer to get things done is to just give clear instructions to the NCOs and the men, who will then put their ingenuity to work. As is often said, you can never have too many friends and your friends are the key to how far you get in life. People around you have an uncanny way of being able to make life difficult but they also have a way of making it much easier if you know how to manage them.   Tang Li *Although I’ve been based mainly in Singapore for nearly two decades, I’ve had the privilege of being able meet people who have crossed borders and cultures. I’ve befriended ministers and ambassadors and worked on projects involving a former head of state. Yet, at the same time, I’ve had the privilege of befriending migrant labourers and former convicts. All of them have a story to tell. All of them add to the fabric of life. I hope to express the stories that inspire us to create life as it should be.      Read More →

1. The minister for national development reported in parliament that HDB will ramp up BTO projects, with 150 projects to be built by 2025. 2. I searched the news report to find out how many units are comprised in the 150 projects. I could not find any mention. I am disappointed that the minister failed to give relevant information and the media does not ask for this information. 3. I searched the Internet and found a news report that 10 projects comprising 10,000 units were offered recently. I guess that each project would yield about 1,000 units. 4. The 150 projects would probably yield 150,000 units. This is over a period of three years. The annual rate is 50,000 units per year. This is rather high. The number of marriages each year is about 25,000. 5. Perhaps some of the flats are required to clear the backlog, as the waiting time for a new flat is currently 5 years. 6. It is possible that HDB is building for more foreigners to live in Singapore. We might be aiming to increase our population to 6.9 million, or even 10 million. This was planned in the past. 7. As the MRT network has been expanded considerably during the past ten years, it can probably cope with the increase in population. However, I am not sure if we are building enough schools, hospitals and other facilities to cater for the bigger population.   Tan Kin Lian      Read More →