Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam clarified the issue of government surpluses during the last night of campaigning for GE 2015, reported Channel NewsAsia.
One notion that has emerged, he said, is “the government is actually making a very large surplus and hiding it away in reserves — and why don’t we use this secret surplus instead on all the ‘good things’?”
Tharman, who also serves as Finance Minister, noted that figures provided by the government to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) include monies received by the government from selling land. “Why do we not spend in Singapore monies we get from selling land instead of putting it in the reserves where it can earn income? This is prudent, long-term budgeting,” he said.
“It doesn’t mean we’re hiding the money, it means we will draw continually on the reserves every year by using the income on reserves. This way, we will never have a government that will sell land quickly, especially when the market is booming, in order to get money and spend more,” said Tharman, adding that the Constitution prohibits the government from spending money obtained from selling land.
“This is not about saving money for your great, great, great-grandchildren. This is about money we are already benefitting from today, because we have been prudent all along,” he said. “Today, we have much higher investment returns coming into our budget.”
For this year alone, there was $9 billion of investment income which the government can use for social spending, for instance. Of this amount, $4 billion “is attributable to accumulated surpluses that went into the reserves out of the sale of land over the years”. As such, today’s generation, along with the older generation, benefit from this prudent budgeting.
“And it is in a way in which we are fair to today’s generation, but make sure that this same fairness extends to our children’s generation and all future generations,” said Tharman.
Cheryl Marie Tay, Senior Journalist at PropertyGuru, edited this story. To contact her about this or other stories email cheryl@propertyguru.com.sg
