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.