SINGAPORE: The Progress Singapore Party (PSP) will file a parliamentary motion to debate Singapore’s public housing market, secretary-general Francis Yuen said on Wednesday (Dec 21).
In a post on the party’s Facebook page, Mr Yuen said: “PSP welcomes the Government’s offer for a parliamentary debate on our public housing, and we will file a motion in due course to have a free and open discussion on the challenges facing our public housing market.”
He was responding to a post from Tuesday by Senior Minister of State for National Development Sim Ann on the issue.
Ms Sim, while replying to Non-Constituency Member of Parliament Leong Mun Wai’s social media posts on Housing Board Built-To-Order (BTO) flats, had invited Mr Leong, a PSP member, to file a motion in Parliament on this.
The supply and prices of HDB BTO flats have been hot topics in recent months, and there have been unhappiness from some aspiring home owners about long waits for flats, delays in construction and record prices.
Questions have been raised both online and in Parliament about the affordability of new flats and how they are priced. Ministers and HDB have also explained their approach.
Ms Sim’s latest post on Tuesday refutes Mr Leong’s assertions that HDB BTO flats are not subsidised if the land costs are disregarded.
Mr Leong had also said that public housing, if treated as public infrastructure, can sit on state land, and there will be no drawdown of reserves.
He criticised the Government for amassing too much in reserves, writing in his Dec 16 post: “Even the drawdown on reserves for COVID-19, which is touted as a once-in-a-lifetime crisis, has hardly caused ‘a dent in the armour’ of our trillion-dollar reserves.”
He asserted that the more urgent need now is to do more to help the present generation overcome their many challenges, such as to stop increasing taxes like the Goods & Services Tax.
He also said that the land sales proceeds should not be put into the reserves, but used in the current budget every year.
Responding to this, Ms Sim said that HDB BTO flats are sold at a significant subsidy, and many buyers also get grants on top of that.
“When home owners sell their BTOs on the resale market, this subsidy is realised,” she said.
Questioning Mr Leong’s accounting of land costs and of Singapore’s reserves, Ms Sim said that this is “a wrongheaded proposal which carries serious consequences”.
“There is no room for magical thinking here. Although the Government has explained it many times, it appears we have to do so again,” she added.
“Mr Leong is far from being the first Government critic to have over-confidence in the adequacy of our Reserves and to call for Government to use more investment returns to fund current spending.
“Like his predecessors, Mr Leong wants Singaporeans to believe that we should save less in our reserves for future generations, and can afford to draw down more of our reserves for today’s needs.”
She then invited Mr Leong to debate this in Parliament, saying: “I therefore invite Mr Leong to go beyond social media posts and file a motion in Parliament, so that we can have a full debate.”
Mr Leong and Ms Sim have been trading words on the matter via social media posts on Facebook.
Earlier on Dec 8, Mr Leong had also said that the Government was not subsidising HDB flats if land cost was taken into account.
“The time has come for us to question whether even our public housing policy has lost its way,” he had written.
Replying to this on Dec 11, Ms Sim said that the Government has kept BTOs affordable for Singaporeans “by objective measures”.
She said that while some people may find Mr Leong’s proposal to price BTO flats much more cheaply attractive, it will end up with a few HDB BTO flat buyers enjoying a “large windfall gain” while drawing down on Singapore’s reserves.
Ms Sim said that this would lead to the running down of Singapore’s reserves, to the “detriment of current and future generations”.
She had concluded: “Drastically lowering BTO prices, to the extent of disregarding land costs, would only end up hurting all Singaporeans, instead of helping them.”
