TR EMERITUS

I had the unpleasant experience of telling a young man that he was royally screwed. It’s the second time in my dealings that I’ve told him that life has f** him good and hard. Goes without saying that he wasn’t happy. I did tell him that he was f**ed in our initial conversation because his employer has just gone into liquidation and at the moment there’s no money to pay anyone. I did however, tell him to keep in contact because things might change. Unfortunately for me, he took it that I was telling him that there would be instant cash in the bank in a month’s time. I guess, I guess the fault here is that I assumed he’d take what I said literally but I guess he heard what he wanted to hear. I get it that he’s p** off right now and from where he’s coming from. If I look at his situation objectively, its clear that he has been screwed by life’s ironies. He is officially doing everything right – working in a sector that the government claims to want Singaporeans to work in. He’s obviously competent enough at his job. He’s raising a family and having children (which is officially what the government wants) and yet, when he’s been screwed through no fault of his own, the system can’t help him. His biggest fault in this case is the fact that he is a Singaporean citizen. So, whilst his Bangladeshi, Indian and Malaysian colleagues have the option of trying their luck with MigrantWorker’s Council (“MWC”), this guy doesn’t have anyone else to turn to except hope that there may be a distribution in the liquidation (which is at best a slim chance – the Company wouldn’t be in liquidation if it could afford to pay wages). This incident comes at a time when Singapore is trying to show its citizens that you don’t need to have a first from Oxbridge followed by an MBA from one of the American Ivy League schools. Towards the end of last year, our President went as far as to say that we should reward people for their competence rather than qualifications: [LINK] Our President’s message was supposed to assure Singaporeans who were not Oxbridge-Civil Service material that they too had a stake in the country. Thanks to Covid spreading like wild fire in the dormitories for migrant workers, the government decided that it needed to recognise that migrant workers were actually human beings but at the same time needed to lesson the dependency of certain labour-intensive industries on workers from “darker” parts of Asia. How am I seeing this in daily life? Well, this time I found out through discussions with Ministryof Manpower that there was the possibility that some of the workers might get help from the MWC. Then, earlier this month, there was a call for the construction industry to develop a “Singapore-Core.” [LINK] So, if you go back to this young man’s dilemma, its very easy to see why he’s upset. He is doing what the government wants him to do and he is what the government says it wants. However, in his situation, there’s no alternative except to write off a lot of overtime. Let’s forget the dollar figure of what he’s lost. He has lost 60 hours for the month of August of last year. To put that into perspective, the standard work week is 60-hours. So, for that particular month, he worked an extra week. Had someone told him he wasn’t going to get paid extra for that, he would have been better off spending it with his kids. While migrant workers do not by any means have it easy. There are still too many instances of abuse and too many people who think that the guys doing the tough jobs should be grateful to be housed in places where we would enter in a hazmat suite. However, there is a belated recognition that migrant workers are actually human too. Treating migrant workers better also needs to be accompanied by an improvement in working conditions for certain industries so that the local population would be less inclined to shun them. The government’s answer has been that it does so through the foreign worker levy, which makes hiring a worker from elsewhere as expensive as hiring a local. In practice, this is a superb money spinner for the government because there are things other than salary that make the job undesirable. Today’s encounter would suggest that a Singaporean worker on a construction site doesn’t get the sense that he’ll be protected it things go wrong. This young man is screwed for being a good guy. I can’t refer him to any agency for help. We shoot down things like employment insurance because it’s deemed as too costly for business. Yet, when people do work in the jobs that you want to work in, shouldn’t we at least have a system that provides them with something to help tide over until they get the next job? Nobody is saying that people should get a hand-out instead of work. We, should, however, ensure that people who are willing to work, particularly in the tougher industries have a lesser burden if things go south.   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. Someone said that Hyflux incurred large losses on their overseas projects on on underquoting for the supply of water in the Tuaspring project. 2. Hyflux invested in the following overseas project Tianjin Dagang Newspring - loan of $121 million taken from a China bank Oman Quarayyat IWP - $250 m project awarded to Hyflax Hydrochem Saudi - $72 million awareded to Hyflux The total investment by Hyflux in these three overseas projects was $450 SGD. There are no information about the losses, if any. If we assume that the loss is 20%, it would amount to $100 million. 3. Hyflux invested $1,300 million in the Tuaspring project. The book value was reported to be $1,470 million. I guess that interest and management expenses must be added to the original project cost. The water plant was handed to the Public Utilities Board for free, on the termination of the long term water agreement. The power plant was sold to the Francis Yeoh of the YTL group for $270 million. Hyflux incurred a loss of over $1,000 million on Tuaspring. 4. If Hyflux had underquoted for the water that is provided under the long term contract, how much would that be? Hyflux was awarded a 25 year contract to produce 318,500 cubic meters of water a day at $0.45 pcm. The total contract value is $52 million a year of $1,300 million over 25 years. If Hyflux had underquoted by 20% for the production of water, the loss would be $10 million a year or $250 million over 25 years. 5. From the above information, I conclude as follows: a) The loss (if any) on the overseas contracts would be less than $100 million. b) The loss (if any) from underquoting of the water price would be less than $250 million c) The bulk of the loss could be attributed to the generation of electricity at a time when the price had collapsed due to oversupply.   Tan Kin Lian      Read More →

Recently the PAP have made use yet again, in a typically arbitrary high-handed and arrogant manner of their authoritarian POFMA law. LHL and his Government find this a brilliant tool to intimidate Singaporeans and stop them from questioning obvious discrepancies or piercing the veil of secrecy that shrouds the reserves and the Budget. Despite my relentless questioning of Government fabrications and accounting tricks to hide money and the true state of the finances, I have never been POFMA’ed which would suggest that I am getting close to the truth and that answering me might open a can of worms since they would be obliged to provide more information. Instead they ignore me because they know I will not be intimidated and nothing will induce me to shut up. I will keep on asking questions until I get answers. This time the POFMAs were issued because the individuals (including the ex-chief economist at GIC) had asked why HDB BTO flats are not priced using the original acquisition cost of the land plus the construction costs. Since the majority of this land was “acquired”, a euphemism if there was ever one, by the Government for a tiny fraction of its true value back in the 1960s and 1970s, the true cost of new BTO flats (most of which constitutes land cost) is much lower than the supposedly “market” price the HDB sells the flats for. Some of the individuals from whom the land was expropriated were extremely wealthy but many were not, including small holders who lost their farms and were forced to live in relative poverty. Many in the Opposition have asked going back at least a couple of decades why the Government does not simply price the cost of BTO flats at the original book value of the land plus the cost of construction. The Government’s standard retort, most recently by Sim Ann and in the form of the message that those POFMA’ed were forced to carry as well as on the Government website (Un)Factually.sg, is that for the Government to charge anything less than market price for the land would be deplete the reserves and thus shortchange future generations. I have always found this argument to be disingenuous since if the Government was concerned about future generations of Singaporeans it would do a lot more to provide support to families and make education free up to tertiary level so that younger generations had the best possible start in life. Rather than help disadvantaged Singaporeans the PAP have always preferred to offer scholarships to talented foreigners who are then invited to work here and become citizens without having to do NS, and to welcome FTs with mediocre degrees who similarly enjoy low taxes and no NS obligations. But in any case talking about a “market” price is nonsense when the Government owns nearly 90% of the land and a similar proportion of Singaporeans live in public housing. With a nearly complete monopoly the “market” price is wherever the Government chooses to set it. So why does the Government not set the price of land lower or at least set it at a level that would mean that HDB would not make a loss every year? HDB’s loss is This necessitates the Government, or to be precise the Ministry of National Development (MND,) providing a grant every year ($4,4 billion in 2022) to HDB. Why artificially make a loss by requiring HDB to pay the “market” price for land which it purchases from the Government and which the Government paid next to nothing for in the first place. The answer came to me after I spent some time pondering this question. As usual the PAP put up a smoke and mirrors misdirection to confuse and bamboozle Singaporeans. Having HDB overpay for the land. using a market price that is meaningless when the Government controls the supply, and then having the MND reimburse HDB for its loss through the Budget, provides a conduit by which revenues from taxes like GST and income tax is “spent” buying the land for a second time after it was originally bought when the land was acquired, or rather expropriated, from its original owners. The money thus spent represents part of the Past Reserves and can then be channelled to Temasek and GIC, which are controlled by the PM and, at least until recently, his wife, and which are not accountable to Parliament for their performance. This sleight of hand just represents one among the many fake accounting tricks and potentially outright fraud that the Government to keep resources out of the hands of what it regards as undeserving Singaporeans and to argue constantly for the need for taxes to rise. I have highlighted several of them in the past including the Net Investment Reserves Contribution which in many years has gone straight into long term funds of which only a small fraction is spent every year, contributions from long term funds and endowments that mysteriously appear again under current expenditures to be set against current revenues and mysteriously exponentially rising healthcare (and also education) expenditures which also are set against current revenues in the Budget while at the same time fees collected from Singaporeans by the privatised MOH Holdings are not shown and may also be channelled directly to Temasek and GIC. This, along with overpayment for land, may be one way the Government disguises losses by our sovereign wealth funds and keeps up the facade that they are making if not great at least acceptable returns. I admit it always puzzled me when Tharman and then my old Cambridge colleague, Heng Swee Keat (of the East Coast Plan), waxed lyrical about the generous subsidies given to Singaporeans for housing, healthcare and education and contrasting this with democratic countries with proper social safety nets. There are no real subsidies, just the Government making you overpay or pay twice for what you already own and diverting the money into unaccountable private companies managed by people, including the PM’s wife, PAP connected persons and relatives as well as a whole army of foreign sycophants and brown nosers, whose salaries you as a lower class peasant are not entitled to know, while making it look as though there are no resources available to help you with the problems you face. Singaporeans are perpetually putting money into the but no money ever seems to come out. If that is not the perfect Ponzi scheme, I do not know what is. If I do not get POFMA’ed for this blog then you will know I am right.   Kenneth Jeyaretnam   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 →