Looking back at the last decade
According to the Straits Times news report “PM Lee: Looking back on 10 years at the helm and ahead at new tensions and challenges” (Jan 16) – “And on his biggest regret:
“In retrospect, it is easy to say that we should have been building up our infrastructure a lot faster, that we should have got our trains running, we should have built more HDB flats.
At the time we thought we were doing the right thing, pacing it, measuring it out, building it when we needed it and not spending resources until we needed to spend them.
It turned out that things did not pan out the way we expected. I think that we have to plan in future less conservatively and try to be less precise in our prognostications.” – Let’s look at the key statistics in the last 10 years.
HDB
HDB prices increased by 78 per cent from 2004 (URA Resale Price Index 77.1) to 2014 (137.1).
Wages
The real growth in basic wage, total wage and median gross wage (excluding employer CPF contribution) were near to zero per cent per annum.
Foreigners
“On dealing with the tensions between Singaporeans and foreigners:
“We have to talk about it on both sides, with Singaporeans to understand why it is necessary (to have foreigners here) and how we are adapting our policies to minimise the impacts and the side-effects.” – The number of foreigners increased by 845,587 or 112 per cent to 1,598,985.
Moreover, an estimated 450,000 new PRs and 200,000 new citizens were granted.
Healthcare
The total number of hospital beds increased by only an estimated 500 beds or 5 per cent to 12,035.
Jobs
An estimated one million jobs were created for foreigners against half a million for locals (Singaporeans and PRs).
CPF
The number of all Singaporeans at age 55 who were able to meet their CPF Minimum Sums (currently $155,000 + MMS $43,500) entirely with CPF without pledging property decreased to only about one in eight.
Win battles lose war
TRS Contributor