Temporarily suspend GST for rental until 2010?

With regards to Budget 2009, Singapore must be the first country that actually directly subsidise labour cost for companies. This is known as the Job Credit Scheme.

The Jobs Credit that an employer receives will comprise 12% of the first S$2,500 of the wages of each employee who is on the CPF payroll. It will be given in four quarterly payments, with each payment being based on the workers who are with the employer at the time. What is essential to know is whether the Job Credit is directly paid into the employee’s CPF account or his bank account.

Moreover, many Singaporean workers are not longer permanent stuff but contractual workers by now. Although the CPF Act entitles contractual workers to CPF Contributions, MOM’s lax enforcement imply that many contractual workers are actually not the CPF payroll.

Budget day is always good….its the only session throughout the year where we can see our elites all awake in Parliament.

Leong Sze Hian’s wise words:
1. You employ one worker, you save 12% on his salary.
2. You retrench one worker, you save 100% on his salary.

Let’s hope the Job Credit scheme would actually save jobs although common sense tells me its impact would be limited.

The budget is not good enough. I wish they can cut our 20% CPF contribution or lower GST for daily essentials such as rice and oil. Rice is going to be expensive again ! Why keep the 20% CPF contribution where we now hardly can survive when our employer cut wages during this bad time ?

NTUC Chief Lim Swee Say Strikes again! Why does his words always seems so…

we got to make our mps work harder.

all we get is some cpf rebats.

through the companies.

sigh…

I feel so rich everytime i recieve my MONTHLY CPF statement.

What came out from this Budget, in my view, far exceeded what we can expect from a government that has exceedingly paid its own cronies $MILLION Salary !

far exceeded what we can expect from any government

I love it every time he sings the party’s songs of praise, they are so musical that it is deafening. Evidently, he does not know anything about shame. I believe that someone’s balls are well licked.

4) smallvice585 on January 22nd, 2009 11.58 pm
Leong Sze Hian’s wise words:
1. You employ one worker, you save 12% on his salary.
2. You retrench one worker, you save 100% on his salary.

So what does wise man Leong prescribe?

What came out of this budget seems to have far exceeded only Lim Swee Say’s expectations and no one else. Of course the subject can only lavish praises on the Emperor’s new clothes or risk the latter’s ire.
I am very tired of such sounds.

Very skewed to helping the lower income group.

I was hoping more for the sandwiched class like myself. Property tax rebates are chicken feed lah, for a 4 room pigeon hole.

This Lim Sweey Sweey is always overwhelmed by the government’s actions. Wonder whether he paid attention during those cabinet sessions or is he trying to convince us that the labour union is really NOT in cahoots with the government!

I have doubts too that the job credit will help save jobs. But I hope it does.

I hope it doesn’t get abused by unscrupulous companies.

#12 `so what does wise man Leong prescribe?’

Why should he give the prescription for million-dollar brains paid to do this budget? I have been drummed into my brains that there is no such thing as a free lunch except in Buddhist or Sikh temples.

Or the question above is being sarcastic to `armchair’ critics who point out faults and problems but do not give the kind of `constructive’ solutions that do not grate on their ears?

Pay the man Leong to prescribe then.

To my point of view, The Budget to help not the poor much but helpping the rich and bosses more. Everytime they say, helpping us to retain our job, how sure will your with this Budget implemented, your boss or company will not retrench you? Is just talk only and no guranttee us that your company will listen to Government. Example DBS retrenchment don’t even care what our PAP say.

Reduce Income Tax by 20% with a cap of $2000. Does this help the Poor or the Rich.

If PAP really wanted to help SIngaporean to pull through this period of time, they should stop the GST temporary and enforce all shop to reduce their prices on goods that we need to purchase daily.

#4) smallvice585
Leong Sze Hian’s wise words:
1. You employ one worker, you save 12% on his salary.
2. You retrench one worker, you save 100% on his salary.

To be fair, it must be seen in the context that downtime usually sees about 10% of the workforce being laid off; and; this measure is to help stave off the need to retrench. So, 12% savings is quite above the 10% mark to help save jobs.

LSS: “What came out from this Budget, in my view, far exceeded what we can expect from any government.”

Here is a labour chief who finds the budget exceedingly good but fails to see that it makes no direct impact to alleviate the sufferings of the people in terms of the unchanged high cost of living.

Most of the measures are marked out to last for a five year term (hint of election) and he fails to see that for as long as this downturn is not upturned, the people will continue to suffer the high cost of living, whether with resilience budget or not.

The direct impact of this budget toward the common man is limited to only the doubled GST credits. The other areas catered to, that will be of any use to the common man, will require him to be gainfully employed to enjoy the benefits. The unemployed, and there are an increased number, will not get to enjoy the benefits of this budget.

So I do not understand what this Sway idiot is happy about.

It is a budget to save businesses, in the hope that by so doing, these businesses need not retrench its staff while the common man may find employment. If companies are not laying off, it does seem stupid to expect them to hire. The losers will remain to be those that are already out of jobs.

It is not a budget that far exceeds expectations. It is a hopeful budget; a gamble this govt is taking, and again, at our expense.

This is why I always come here on impt matters abt current affairs. Thanks for the enlightenment!

6) SZ on January 23rd, 2009 1.03 am
NTUC Chief Lim Swee Say Strikes again! Why does his words always seems so…

This Lim always talks like a parrot as you people observed. There is nothing that he speaks without having to keep praising his master. Good for nothing chap. I believe there are alot of such rotting MPs around and this time round papees will lose their pants off should they try to place “these MPs” back to their GRC wards again. They should be sacked long time ago.

“I think we did not do enough in the area of cost reduction. This is a very urgent issue, I know that the government can do a lot. Freezing government charges alone, probably, was not sufficient. We could have reduced and also looked at other areas to help companies reduce their costs. – PAP MP Inderjit Singh”

I feel very uncomfortable that there’s no mention of cost-cutting measures in the civil service departments (especially the salaries of top civil servants) to cut down on expenditure, thus reducing our country’s deficit.

Inderjit Singh’s words should be applied to the corporation of our government. How to help companies reduce their costs when the government itself does not know how to reduce costs incurred on its people?

It looks like taking money from right pocket and placing it into the left pocket cos the major labour employer is the public sector – there’s the police, army, navy, airforce, hospital, schools, TM, GIC, HDB, TC, SP, SIA, PSA, the rest of the ministry etc etc. As for the private sector, the labour market is not that huge as we imagine. Moreover shopping complexes, hawkers, restaurants, construction, you name it, mostly employ WP & EP holders. Especially hawkers and some sole proprietors don’t even contribute CPF. These group of people very “ai wan” don’t say 12% ah, 0.1% also cannot take back from their labour cost.

If the idea of budget 2009 is to get rid of FW from Spore and encourage employment of locals, I think it will show some impact. Cos employers from private sector who is paying say $1000 to a “simple minded” foreign worker also has to pay FWL plus food, lodging and any other cost to employ him. Therefore this employer may switch to employ a local who may need lesser supervision as it is going to benefit him if the costing is the same or lesser than the former.

Lim Swee Say in a Minister in the Government(Cabinet), if he does not adulate the Cabinet Members(his cohorts), does anyone think he could be a Minister today?

If Lim Swee Say is in Malaysia, I doubt many Malaysians will ever get to know he exists.

He has to be grateful, he must and he will.

He preaches hard, unfortunately I am an atheist, he won’t be able to bring me to heaven.

And I don’t accept his belief!

patriot

Ya I find this Minister (Swee Say) is exagerating. When I was in Japan in Dec on business trip, I already saw on their news that they implementing some form of job credit to help companies cut labour costs to save jobs. If I didnt misunderstand them, the subsidy is about US$10k per worker per year. US and UK Government’s direct help into ailing banks and companies. Yes..I find our budget helpful on the surface but do not blow it out of proportion to a run-up for a snap elections.

In fact for the low pay that the Japanese and UK ministers or US senators are getting, I do not expect such a package from them. For the high pay that our ministers are getting, I will expect more action plans and faster. I will expect no 5-week holiday making french toasts till our people are out of the woods.

One point that continue to irk me is what our Finance Minister reiterated that since wage competitiveness is not the problem here but a global economic crisis…I wonder why we have been losing MNCs as they move to lower costs regions and I wonder why they led us into a recession half a year earlier than the rest of the world? The fundamental problem is that our wage costs has grown too much exceeding our productivity and it is no longer value adding to run many type of operations here. Of course saying this means I also have to cut my own pay; but I see that if we do not wake up now the recession that we are seeing is not a cycle but a prolong decline..

As a layman, I see the Budget as purely pro-business and I doubt it effectiveness to improving the livings of the people in general. For the matter, even improving the local economy.

We have seen(on tv) how the Taiwanese Leadership goes about dealing with the economic crisis. We see the smiling faces of the Taiwanese people, they appeared spiritually uplifted by the measures taken by their wise and effective government.

Just an impression.

patriot

It very true, Patriot, what you have just shared.
I do not think Singaporeans woke up this morning in delight of the budget news.
Personally, I was expecting more direct incentives and help.
Very disappointing.

This is a budget is more pro-company, then pro-employee or common man. As mentioned by many, there is no guarantee that companies wont retrench. Companies still stand to gain by retrenching staff to save 100% of their salary.

To 16) gemami, who mentioned “To be fair, it must be seen in the context that downtime usually sees about 10% of the workforce being laid off; and; this measure is to help stave off the need to retrench. So, 12% savings is quite above the 10% mark to help save jobs.” ………. You are comparing apples and oranges, that 10% of retrenched and 12% of salary do not have the same basis point of reference, so how can you compare like that? Wrong usage of statistical figures lah…. In any case, this is not a USUAL downturn, this is the WORST downturn since the WWII…….

Yes and I agree, there really is nothing to help common ppl cope with this economic situation, especially those who have already been retrenched. Income tax rebates doesnt help low-income earners much…..

Just wondering whether the Jobs Credit are for Singapore PR employee also?

aiyoyo

rebate here rebate there,

job credit here & there,

not sure if the commoners get to see & touch & use the $ that talk in the budget day?

aiyoyo

aiyoyo

why not commoners cpf being able to be utilised at this ‘rainy season’?

is cpf commoners $ or not huh?

still a bit blur on the logic leh..

aiyoyo

I do not believe that switching line is practical nor is it effective.
Having said this, I would say that while not effective, it does not mean there is or will not be rare instances of successful line switching.

Eg. An experienced engineer, tries to switch line. Who will hire him ? let say he is 35-40 years old. Any company can hire any foreign worker for any skills at lower salary and younger age. Would he be happy in this line to work for long? Do employers not consider this when hiring? If so, they should know such workers would go back to work as engineer as soon as he manages to get one back down the road. To show keen interest or to say one is interested to switch line for good is easy. But really, they accept such jobs because they need money to live in singapore. The engineer is skilled and has a lot of experience in engineering. When an engineer job comes, in future, tell me he would not switch back? If he stays in switched line, i am sure his salary can never come back to the same level.

Thus, I am convinced beyond any reasonable doubt, SWitching Line to get a new job is not a Solution. It is not practical and yes, there will be rare cases of successful line switching. But overall, it does not work, as much as I would like to believe it could.

20) yh on January 23rd, 2009 10.20 am
It looks like taking money from right pocket and placing it into the left pocket

Isn’t this is what our elitist govt are good at all these years? tell me what have they REALLLLLLLLLY DONE any GOOD for the people of singapore after all these years besides taking care of their own pockets first?

As usual,budget is a time to move money from the right hand to the left hand.In the last few years budget, businesses were grumbling about how little they have got.Well, they are well compensated this time.

As this is a demand-led recession, increasing supply may be the correct answer. Employers may still hold on to their workers meanwhile while collecting hongbao from the govt, but after a year,if there is still no solid recovery of demand,they will not hesistate to cut jobs. This is no ordinary recession,it will be a long fight as many Americans are near broke, they need to build up their reserves.Chinese are still not ready to take over the mantle.

Expect the govt to come up with more off-budget measures,as they still have lots of ammo in reserve. They will surely need this if they are not to be disappointed at the elections,which i predict to be due in a year’s time.

Let me give an indicator of how serious this recession will turn out to be,

Microsoft,the world’s near monoply on operating system,has just announced job cuts of 5000 and warned that there will be no bounce in sales.

This is unprecedented,imagine a very profitable company scared to hell and start cutting workforce. If they have to do so, what will the “lesser mortals” do?

An analogy to the recession we are facing worldwide is that the world is being hit by an Richter scale 8.0 earthquake,something similar to the Sichuan earthquake last year. We are still facing the aftershocks,the buildings have collapsed ,lives are lost,and it will take a long time to rebuild.

The world has to cooperate in order to rebuild a better place.If not, threats of protectionism,xenophism or whatever will unleash even greater disasters,which i can’t even imagine. Hopefully, the world leaders will be wise enough not to resort to these beggar thy neighbour actions.But, there are already some signs(though not yet a trend),eg. Malaysian just announced a halt to foreign workers in some sector,dumping duties are more common now.

Fact 1- one in seven with hdb loan having problem servicing it——therefore cpf cannot be cut.
Fact 2—The perception of wealth as in hdb flat “ownership” must be kept—cannot allow a sub-prime situation in singapore—-even though asset inflation is a very serious problem.
THEREFORE: 1.Job Credit—Govt help to service hdb loan—
2.Thru overpriced hdb flats—all the money flows right back.