Singapore announces $792m in tax cuts
AFP, Singapore
Singapore announced personal tax cuts and other financial breaks worth 1.3 billion Singapore dollars (792 million US) on Friday as it reported the budget would return to surplus in the next financial year. The government should come close to balancing the budget in the current fiscal year ending March 2005 after earlier predicting a major deficit, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said in presenting the budget to parliament. He said the deficit would only be 440 million dollars, or a third of the 1.35-billion-dollar shortfall originally projected, due to lower government spending and higher net investment income from the country's vast reserves. The city-state also enjoyed its best economic performance in the 2004 calendar year since 2000, with gross domestic product expanding by 8.4 percent. For the fiscal year ending March 2006, Lee said the government was expected to record a budget surplus of 210 million dollars, instead of 940 million dollars after deducting the costs of many of the financial perks.
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