The 2007 Budget just announced in parliament today by the second minister for Finance Mr. Tharmashamuratnam is the same budget in substance as all the previous years' budget viz:-
(1) Tax and recover all possible costs from the people - give some discounts and rebates to appease the victims so as to sustain the system.
(2) What is presented in parliament is only the budgeted income and expenditure without mentioning all the profiteering going on in all the ministries through other methods not revealed e.g. HDB double-charging on lands owned and paid for by the citizens and LTA continuing to charge on vehicle excise duty, petrol duty, road taxes when COE and ERP have been introduced as the fairest method to price road usage.
(3) Ministries and statutory boards providing basic necessities have been corporatized into Pte Ltd GLCs in order to enable them to charge higher monopoly fees which continuously drive up costs of living.
(4) Off-budget surpluses sucked by HDB, JTC, LTA, SP, PSA, are hurting people and driving up our costs of living and cost of doing business and are killing our entrepreneurship and driving away our investers.
Such off-budget surpluses amount to more than one billion per year of which the finance minister remains silent.
Even if the government does not raise GST, it has made more than enought monies from all these GLCs indirect taxing and cost recovery to pay all the rebates and concessions in taxes.
So I am disappointed with the lack of presentation of such off-budget surpluses hidden among all our GLCs which continue to drive up our costs of living and killing our own economic competitiveness.