This year's Budget Highlights is rather uninteresting. The official 2013 wasn't as detailed compared to 2012, of which I had wrote about same time last year. This year, apart from the change in car ownership rulings, and subsidizing 40% of salary increments, nothing much stood out. Do read the picture book version of the budget speech here (without details on the 40% downpayment 5 year maximum loan for new car ownership). Back to the numbers report, I was disappointed that they didn't include the Headcount by Ministry, that would be interesting to know. As always, you can click on the image to enlarge it.
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Revenue for 2012 - Corporate and personal tax, and GST fuels our country, taking up more then half of the total revenue. Vehicle quota premiums and motor vehicle taxes remained about the same, but made up for a whopping 8% of the revenue compared to 3.8% last year. Don't be mistaken, this is just the percentage based off total revenue. The actual amount from vehicle taxes actually reduced by about 0.1b from 2011. It could be that other areas have been receiving tax exemptions or rebates, but the motoring industry certainly weren't given any slack.
With the changes made toward financing a car, it might succeed in reducing the numbers. On the other hand, this may allow the cash rich and high income one percent-ors to purchase more vehicles when COEs are reduced. The end scenario might see the wealthy own more cars, the middle income own no cars, and the poor seeing no difference in traffic congestion. Eat smog y'all.
Corporate and income tax were the largest increase (by figures, not by percentage) at 1 billion. We have got more investors on our shores, and it's good to see companies thriving. On personal income, my speculation here would be that the local millionaires are also thriving, and we've granted more citizenship to the obscenely rich faster then you can say Eduardo.
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Expenditure for 2012 - Many people have asked, take our money, tax our car, only to go into their pockets. No. It does not. Ministers are already paid their millions, and most of it goes back into running the country.
4% goes into government administration. A cool 2 billion dollars. They were smart not to dissect it to include government rumination, because it's too obscene to be aired in public. Even street walkers cover their lady bits when they're selling their wares.
My personal view is that I do not mind them politicians getting paid top dollar to run a country, god knows it is more difficult then running an MNC. I do mind paying mindless scholars with zero EQ the same amount. I also do mind that our policies haven't improved much. Lastly, I do mind that my children will have a hard time scrapping for a roof over their head regardless of the millions of dollars we had paid our politicians. Smells like an insurance scam.
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Trend in Social Development Expenditure - Why do I include this in? For this quote:
The Government’s revenues started to grow at a faster pace from FY2006 onwards as the economy recovered. The improvements in the Government’s fiscal position enabled us to step up our investments in the Social Development sector, such as healthcare infrastructure, and introduce new programmes like the Workfare Income Supplement Scheme. Consequently, social expenditure rose rapidly, by 76% between FY2006 and FY2012, from $13 billion to $23 billion. The share of social expenditure in total government expenditure (including government endowment fund expenditure) also rose from 43% in FY2006 to 45% in FY2012. On a per resident basis, social expenditure grew by 63% from $3,681 in FY2006 to $5,995 in FY2012. This works out to an annual growth of 6.8% in real terms.
They are telling us that an excellent job was done, and they deserve a pat on the back. It reminded me of my mother nagging me not to complain so much.
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Overall Fiscal Position - Revised 2012 stands at a surplus of $3,858 million. 2011 stood at $4,003 million.
But see here, the overall budget surplus for 2011 (reported last year 2012), was $2,320 million.
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I'm not sure the figure for 2011 was final the last I checked. I'm guessing after 2012 the additional plus and minuses come into play? Feel free to enlighten me where the extra 2000 million came from, I'm not familiar with the system.
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Thus ends Budget 2013 from a novice point of view, I am indeed reading the numbers out of my own interest. That being said, my personal view stands that we should invest more money in individual singaporeans for health, housing, and education.
- Reduce or remove the number of scholarships for foreigners, unless it is for diplomatic purposes.
- Good move on reducing HDB prices, but do provide more rebates for full Singapore citizens.
- I don't mind the rich buggers coming in, and I don't see myself as serving them at all. Pay us taxes, and we'll give you a safe haven. So far, I have not seen any Singaporeans needing to kow tow to them.
- Schemes for SMEs are excellent, but I hope to see the ministry do something about educating employers on fair wages. The 40% rebate on increments is a good start, yet I feel that employers should be educated on why sharing their profit with their staff (increments/bonuses/etc.) would be beneficial to the company.
- Here's a little nugget, last year's ministerial headcount:
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