For individuals, this means building a strong learning foundation during their school years, retraining and reskilling throughout their lives, and supporting employment and career transitions. For businesses, this could mean supporting green transitions and digitalisation, securing investment and seizing opportunities abroad.
Structural measures to keep business and living costs manageable are also important. These include ensuring an adequate supply of land and housing for future needs, diversifying food and other import sources, controlling health costs, and ensuring cost-effectiveness in the delivery of public services. .
use it well
How much a government spends to households and citizens through its budget is determined by both needs and the availability of financial resources, independent of whether elections are imminent.
A seven-hour debate in Congress on February 7 on the use of national reserves focused on how much money is appropriate to spend from the proceeds of investments in reserves. In fact, how the government spends is just as important, if not more important, than how much it spends.
Countries that spend more than Singapore on education and health as a proportion of their gross domestic product do not necessarily perform better in education or health outcomes. The key is to spend more efficiently by designing evidence-based public programs that align with individual incentives.
Upstream interventions in areas such as education, health care, and crime prevention can produce better outcomes while saving expensive downstream expenditures. For example, the KidSTART program helps low-income families give their young children a good start in life, and Healthy SG promotes healthy living and preventive care.
Government spending should also aim to crowd out, not crowd out, the efforts of the private and people’s sectors.