If I could summarise my reaction and those of my peers to the budget delivered by Minister for Finance and Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong on Feb. 14, “nonchalance” would be an apt word to describe it.
On the heels of the Budget speech, I spoke to a handful of my friends to see what they thought about it.
To be clear, those I spoke with did not follow the budget down to the detail, but were in the loop on the major announcements. Some were acquainted with the commentaries that came after.
To move our discussion, I reminded them of the key announcements, and did my best to fill in the details when they asked. This was enough for them to formulate their opinions, at least based on general impressions.
They offered mellowed reactions, describing the budget as “expected”, “fair”, or just shrugged their shoulders and went on with life.
Before you judge us to be apathetic, hear me out.
The sense that I got was that the budget brought little surprises to us, apart from the fact that Wong made zero Valentine’s Day puns or jokes, despite the number of family-centric measures announced and having described the budget as a “Valentine’s Day present to all”.
This year’s budget was, in a formulaic way, a very Singaporean budget – it reminded Singaporeans of the tough road ahead, described the help we will get, and laid out familiar national priorities.
A new crisis to confront
In a timely move right before the Budget, the Multi-Ministry Taskforce (MTF) announced on Feb. 9 that mask-wearing on public transport was no longer required from Feb. 13 onwards and that the MTF would stand down too.
I celebrated the news which spelled the end of the pandemic. “It has gone on for far too long, and there have been way too many missed opportunities because of it”, I thought.
Call me silly all you want, but I did look forward to a summer exchange programme to British Columbia in Canada.
Before life caught on and I stepped into adulthood proper, I wanted the chance to spend sometime living overseas as I believed it would help broaden my perspective on things.
Alas, it was not meant to be.
I’ll take making it through the pandemic largely unscathed as consolation, however.
But, just as I thought doing away with masks meant being able to catch my breath from being stuck in a crisis, Wong’s budget quickly shifted the mood a day later on Feb. 14.
A new “new normal” was alluded to by Wong and several senior leaders earlier this year, such as Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Home Affairs and Law Minister K Shanmugam.
“The era of untrammelled globalisation that kept goods at highly competitive prices all over the world is over”, Wong declared in his budget statement.
Instead, we are now in a zero-sum world where the new buzzwords are: national security and gain, economic nationalism and protectionism.
Countries are re-looking at their supply chains, buying strategic security instead of buying cheaper, Wong said.
All these continue to fan inflation, and may even lead to inflation rates stabilising at a higher rate than we were used to in the past decade. These high prices we see now might be here to stay.
Oh, bother.
How we move forward
With a new crisis to tackle, what now?
Government support to cope with inflation and GST increase
First came the enhancements to cash payouts under the GST Vouchers scheme and the Assurance Package to help Singaporeans cope with inflation and the GST increase.
Assuming I entered the right details into the budget calculator, I should receive more than S$1,000 in cash payouts from the government by the end of the year.
To me, the payouts are welcome relief, and I do believe this year’s enhancements will go a long way in helping people cope with rising prices.
However, it’s hard not to feel the pinch whenever you order your usual lunch meal and things start to cost more or come in smaller portions.
For me, I am lucky that the canteen near my office still offers meals at reasonable prices.
One friend who works in the Dhoby Ghaut area is not so fortunate.
When I asked about the state of his pursestrings, he lamented to me about the cost of lunch meals, which costs an average of S$8 a day.
I asked how he coped.
“Just cry. I have to eat, so there’s no choice,” he replied in jest.
He has, however, taken to skipping on getting a drink to go with his meals.
On big ticket items, MAS shared in October 2022 that cost increases for cars and accommodation are likely to stay “firm” due to tight COE quotas and strong rental housing demand.
Median household income increased by only 0.2 per cent in 2022, according to the Department of Statistics.
Wong recognised in his speech that things could worsen, calling out several downside risks that “cannot be predicted with certainty”, like the escalation of the Ukrainian war.
Despite the best efforts by the government to allay material concerns through the enhancements, the impression that crystalises amidst daily life is that things are getting pricier, wages are slow to rise, and the material aspirations of old (like owning cars, for example) are getting harder to attain.
It’s hard not to feel an air of pessimism whenever I talk about this with my peers.
The same drink-deprived friend went on to relay the sentiments of his own peers, sharing that despite all of them having “good” jobs, they too feel that things like cars and houses are unattainable right now.
With other friends, conversations on this topic drifted to thinking about whether things might be different abroad.
Often, they end with a metaphorical clink of the pint glasses, a consoling pat on each others’ backs, and a return to the daily grind.
Supporting young families
Late last year, the government repealed Section 377A. When PM Lee announced the government’s intention to do so, he reiterated the government’s commitment to family as the core unit of our social fabric.
This year’s budget walked that talk: paternity leave will be doubled, baby bonuses will be enhanced, government contributions to the Child Development account will be increased, and the Working Mother’s Child Relief scheme will now be based on a fixed amount rather than percentage of income.
Babies aside, Wong also took note of the housing concerns that were boiling over.
He announced that eligible couples will get an additional ballot at BTOs, and those buying resale flats will get as much as S$30,000 in CPF grants.
These are not inconsequential sums of money. I am sure they will be welcomed by many, like my eldest brother who entered married life not too long ago.
But as a single pringle with no plans to get hitched and have a child in the near future, I cannot help but feel left out. One friend, a fellow single pringle, shared that the more compelling commentary he has heard so far on the budget is the lack of eye-catching initiatives for singles.
Another told me that it did not help that rent is skyhigh at the moment, so those of us who are thinking of moving out of our parents’ homes (for good reasons) have little choice but to stay put.
Of course if they really want to move out, things are a bit better now. They can explore resale HDB flats, with the increase of CPF Housing grant for singles.
That being said, neither I nor my single pringle peers were surprised.
One government survey from October 2022 found that marriage and parenthood aspirations remain strong among Singaporeans.
The enhanced policies announced by Wong support these very aspirations. On top of that, it provides a subtle nudge to everyone else to get wed and start a family too.
Supporting workers in a changing economy
Singapore’s only resource is our manpower.
Anyone who has sat through a Social Studies class in school may well remember this adage about Singapore’s reality.
Wong’s budget took note of this through a series of measures to help workers from all walks of life find their place in a rapidly changing labour market.
For one, he announced that Job-Skills Integrators will be appointed to serve as intermediaries between employees, employers, and workforce trainers so as to reconcile imperfect information in the labour market.
All these are well and good, but with one parent at home now unemployed after shuttering his business due to the pandemic, I am inclined to think that the major hurdle might not be the amount of resources available to workers looking to upskill or find employment.
Workers, like my parent, who lost their jobs due to the pandemic are now finding themselves back on a job market in an economy run by technologies that they might not be familiar with.
My parent has not said it explicitly, but I’m sure this is a frightening and discouraging reality to confront in your later years in life.
Perhaps the greater challenge is granting workers, especially older ones, with the confidence to venture back onto an unfamiliar labour market.
The Singaporean way
Nuances aside, the Budget therefore brought no big surprises, especially in terms of eye-catching new initiatives that may decisively change the course of Singapore.
If the government is looking to refresh our social compact for the future, as Wong suggested, then perhaps the budget hints at what that might look like: a strong commitment to the family unit, tapping on our people as our best resource, and unity as a people to weather the storm, just to name a few ideas.
These are familiar, textbook ideas about what made Singapore succeed previously, and these broad ideas are updated and re-applied to a new crisis before us.
It is safe to say that the conversations I had with my peers were filled with pessimism, though I believe this must be forgivable.
Young people like us are expectedly idealistic. At an age where we have just started to find our footing in society, there are dreams to be conjured and aspirations to fulfil.
Bogged down by the pandemic for three years and now greeted with a changing world that comes with a high price tag, we are left wondering if reality can afford our aspirations. In the words of one friend: “it feels like we got the shortest end of the stick”.
Taken together, nonchalance seems an appropriate reaction to a budget with no surprises. There was not even a Valentine’s Day pun to chuckle at.
With so much to worry about, what else to do but grit your teeth, keep your chin up and keep trudging on?
Top image via Canva, Lawrence Wong/Instagram, Adelphi Psych Medical Clinic
