Whilst I continue with my attempts to hold the MOF up to proper scrutiny,  we must not forget the discrepancies in our Budget. I have decided to make the following exchange of correspondence available as a public service and an exercise in transparency.  It is in chronological order but those of you who find it a bit dull may wish to skip to the end. There I discover another discrepancy and  I am still awaiting a response. Unfortunately the Statistics Department have become ominously silent since I drew it to their attention five days ago.

A bit of context:

In February I produced a response to the government’s Budget 2012  in my role as SG of RP.(http://thereformparty.net/about/press-releases/budget-2012-part-one/ ) Naturally this was not published in the MSM or even on TOC.  The MSM is a political tool used to isolate me and make the Party look inactive. As for TOC, I guess the editor Ravi Philemon preferred  to give prominence to the pro -PAP budget  responses of  his friends in his usual partisan manner.

I pointed out that the Budget was not set out according to the Special Data Dissemination Standards of the IMF and that vital information was missing, particularly concerning the state of the reserves invested in our SWFs, Temasek and GIC.

After I looked at the government’s Statements of Assets and Liabilities dating back to 2004, I was particularly concerned that the net assets, (after subtracting from total assets government debt held by CPF as well as amounts needed to fund government pension funds and other educational and medical funds) , was much lower than to be expected given the advertised returns of Temasek and GIC as well as the limited information that was available to me on the general government surpluses from 2004 to 2010 from the Yearbook of Statistics.

In order to confirm my suspicions that there were serious discrepancies I wrote to the Statistics Department on 23^rd May 2012.

Enquiry sent on:-5/23/2012 4:22:53 PM

Name :Kenneth Jeyaretnam
Email :kjeyaretnam@gmail.com
Organisation :The Reform Party
Designation :Secretary-General
Country :Singapore
Nature of Business :Non-Government Organisation
Purpose of Obtaining Data :Internal Research and Analysis
Type of Occupation :Economist
Query :General Government Finance
Government Finance

Annual

1980-2011
Years Selected :2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999
Type of Business Statistics :
Types of Industry/Activity :

I received this response.

Dear Mr Jeyaretnam,

 We refer to your request of 23 May 2012.

 The data breakdowns for General Government Finance are as follows:

The data breakdowns for Government Finance are as follows:

We would appreciate it if you could let us know the annual data series you require so that we could check on the data availability and compute the appropriate charge.

 Thank you.

 Regards

Lue Poh Choo (Ms)

Singapore Department of Statistics

 From: info@singstat.gov.sg [mailto:info@singstat.gov.sg]
Sent: Wednesday, 23 May, 2012 4:23 PM
To: SINGSTAT Info (SINGSTAT)
Subject: Statistical Enquiry from SingStat Website 23/5/2012 at 4:22:53 PM

 _______________________________________________________________________________

I wrote back on 24^th May 2012:

Strictly you have not given me any data merely the format in which it is presented. I would like all the data for both categories General Government Finance and Government Finance for the period requested.

 Please let me know what will be the cost ASAP.

_______________________________________________________________________________

Their response the same day was as follows:

Dear Mr Jeyaretnam,

 We refer to your email of 24 May 2012.

 Our Department is able to provide the following annual data series, for your internal research and analysis, at $49.60:

 General Government Finance

Government Finance

 If you are interested in obtaining the data, please proceed to make payment online viahttp://www.singstat.gov.sg/svcs/payment.html . Please quote your bill reference number (QG25660)  when you make payment online. We will send the data to you once we have received the appropriate amount.  Thank you.

 Regards

Wong Pui Mun (Ms)

Singapore Department of Statistics

_______________________________________________________________________________

I replied as follows, again on the same day:

Thank you for your response. 

This is very poor. Why can’t I get data from earlier than 1998 for General Government Finance? It’s not as though the government does not have records. What is it trying to hide?

 Almost all the data you are proposing to sell me can be obtained online and from past copies of the Yearbook of Statistics so if this is the best you can do I must decline. Also why should citizens and political parties pay for information that should be freely available? 

_______________________________________________________________________________

On 25^th May I received the following reply:

Dear Mr Jeyaretnam,

 Please refer to your email of 24 May 2012.

 We would like to clarify that we were unable to provide you with data for 1980 – 1997 as these are not available in our database. We have since checked from other data sources for the data series for 1980 to 1997.

 As requested, I attach the following General Government Finance data series for 1980-2010 :

1. a.     1980-1997 (please see attached file)
2. b.    1998-2003 (please see scanned page1 )
3. c.      2004-2009 (please see scanned page 2) and
4. d.    2010 (please see attached file)

Regards

Wong Pui Mun (Ms)

Singapore Department of Statistics

_______________________________________________________________________________

 I wrote back to thank the Statistics Department for their hard work on 26^th May:

 Based on the information supplied I then wrote to the Finance Minister on 1^st June 2012 with some questions but have yet to receive a reply or even an acknowledgement. That letter is on this blog and has been reproduced here and there so I won’t repost  it.

Using the information supplied by the Statistics Department as well as the IMF data given me by Chris Balding I calculated that the total general government surpluses amounted to some $429 billion since 1980 whereas our net assets in the SAL were shown as at 31^st March 2011 to be about $288 billion. This is bad enough. However, if GIC and Temasek’s claimed returns are not in the surpluses, as Chris Balding believes and has stated then the discrepancies would be truly astronomical.

My next piece of forensic work was to look at the government’s Operational Surplus going as far back as possible to try to isolate the part of the surplus which was due to the SWFs as well as receipts from land sales.

On 2 June 2012 I wrote to the Statistics Department as follows:

Would you be able to email me the data for 17.3, 17.4 and 17.5 dating back to 1970 [Tables in the Yearbook] or thereabouts? If you don’t have data earlier than 1980 that’s fine also. Also can you extend the data for 17.1 further back in time?

I really appreciate the hard work you are doing.

Regards,

Kenneth

 On 4^th June 2012 I received the following response:

Dear Mr Jeyaretnam,

We refer to your email of 2 Jun 2012.

We are looking into your request and will respond to you.

 Regards

Wong Pui Mun (Ms)

Singapore Department of Statistics

 My response of 4^th June:

Thank you. Much appreciated.

 On 13^th June the Statistics Department replied with the requested data:

Dear Mr Jeyaretnam,

We refer to your email of 2 Jun 2012. The available data for the requested tables (based on calendar years) are attached below.

Government Operating Revenue

Government Operating Expenditure

Government Developing Expenditure

Thank you.

Regards

Wong Pui Mun (Ms)

Singapore Department of Statistics

 After I noticed a discrepancy with regard to Operating Revenue I wrote to the Statistics Department on 22^nd June pointing this out and requesting an explanation:

Dear Ms. Wong,

Thank you very much for your help in this matter.

 I have come across a discrepancy between the figure for 1999 for Operating Revenue given in the YoS 2000 and YoS 2005 extracts supplied by you. In 2000 it is given as 28,619.2 ($ millions) and in the 2005 extract  the figure is given as 25,597.3. 

Would you very kindly be able to shed some light on this discrepancy?

 Regards,

 Kenneth

So far I have yet to receive a reply. I hope there is a simple explanation for it.

In addition I have now been able to do some more work on the figures supplied to me by the Statistics Department and hope to be able to make public my conclusions in the next few days. At the moment I have to say it is not looking good…

Published by kjeyaretnam

I'm a Singaporean economist who became an opposition activist. I blog to provide an alternative to the porkies that the Pinkies tell. It just so happens that my alternative is the truth. That's why I've never been sued in any civil or criminal court no matter how hard hitting my criticism. I'm quoted and interviewed and asked to speak across the world but largely censored in Singapore in an effort to silence my political opinions. The left hate me because they think I split their vote and because I eschew their outmoded economic models. Models that don't work. The Right and the Conservatives hate me because I'm a liberal. I'm not sure what the middle think of me. I don't think there are more than a handful of people in the middle, here in Singapore. I'm a Singaporean born and bred, dual heritage, my parents Singaporean established here before the State of Singapore was created. I'm not Eurasian. I read economics at Cambridge and could be broadly described as from the Keynesian school but I believe in interventions. I was formerly a successful hedge fund manager. After economics and politics my greatest interests are history, film and Makan. I run but I run so I can eat like a Singaporean. View all posts by kjeyaretnam