Singapore - Govt to spend S$5.5b over 5 years to help less well off

SINGAPORE : Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam has revealed the government will spend about S$5.5 billion over the next five years to help the less well off in Singapore.

Speaking during a post-Budget discussion on Channel NewsAsia, Mr Tharman said the money is what is set aside for new initiatives targeted at the elderly, disabled and lower income group.

He said that a good part of that is in healthcare.

He also touched on the permanent GST Voucher scheme, which he said is meant to be a fairer tax system for Singaporeans.

Mr Tharman explained: "What we wanted to do is to introduce a voucher that will also help them with their daily costs and their medical costs, quite apart from the topping up of income from Workfare, improving subsidies...give them something in the form of a voucher.

"For the first five years, we did it on a temporary basis, now I am doing in on a permanent basis so people can see it with their own eyes and they can understand the whole nature of the tax system, that this is actually a fair tax system...(you are) getting something back if (you are) poor, if (you are) rich, you do not get anything back because your job is to pay some taxes for the betterment of society. That is the basic logic."

For the business community, Mr Tharman said the government is also providing far more this year.

He acknowledged that the pain is in the foreign worker levy. But he added much is going back in terms of productivity incentives as well as the incentives to hire Singaporean workers.

Mr Tharman said this year's Budget amounted to 15 per cent of Singapore's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for all the expenditure announced.

He said that in five years, this will go up to 17 per cent - attributing the sharp increase to heavy investments in transport and healthcare.

- CNA/ms


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