Singapore expects a surplus of S$15.1 billion (US$12 billion) or 1.9 per cent of gross domestic product for the 2025 financial year, more than double an initial projection of S$6.8 billion, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong has said as he unveiled an aggressive bid to pursue AI ambitions in his annual budget speech.<\/p>\n
The higher revenues came from corporate income tax and asset-related revenue collections, including stamp duty and vehicle quota premiums, Wong said on Thursday.<\/p>\n
For the 2026 financial year, he was expecting a surplus of S$8.5 billion, or 1 per cent of GDP.<\/p>\n
Analysts called the bumper crop \u201csurprising\u201d and said the prudent estimation for the next financial year would provide Singapore with more reserves to tackle potential downturns.<\/p>\n
Chua Hak Bin, a senior economist at Maybank, told This Week in Asia the surplus for the 2026 financial year could exceed the government\u2019s prediction of 1 per cent of GDP.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe government is maintaining a prudent fiscal surplus in the first year of the new electoral term, preserving some dry powder to draw upon in the event of any unexpected shock or downturn,\u201d Chua said.<\/p>\n
Wong also revealed that the voucher amount to ease cost-of-living pressures for residents dropped slightly from the previous year, when S$800 was distributed to each Singaporean household. A total of S$500 will be paid out to households in January next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Singapore expects a surplus of S$15.1 billion (US$12 billion) or 1.9 per cent of gross domestic product for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":287950,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[146949,114,9575,184,1980,146954,146950,85,75463,46,146953,146951,2252,82099,146952,59659],"class_list":{"0":"post-287949","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-budget-speech","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-economic-growth","11":"tag-economy","12":"tag-finance-ministry","13":"tag-gini-coefficient","14":"tag-household-incomes","15":"tag-il","16":"tag-income-inequality","17":"tag-israel","18":"tag-job-concerns","19":"tag-peoples-action-party","20":"tag-singapore","21":"tag-singapore-government","22":"tag-social-mobility","23":"tag-wealth-inequality"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}