Prabu Ramachandran from the opposition party Peoples Voice calls for the government to focus on paving the road to economic recovery as their current plans to control inflation do not seem to have their desired effect.
“Increasing interest rates will traditionally slow down inflation, but at the same time increasing GST has shown historically to fuel inflation,” posted Prabu on his Facebook page.
The PV member shared that the incumbent policy of getting overseas expertise would not be favourable to Singapore’s infrastructure.
“Under the package of “attracting global talent”, this in itself could and would, cause demand for basic necessities such as food, water, electricity, housing, transport and healthcare to increase, adding to inflationary pressures as supply for these necessary services & products remains constant and consistent,” said the 2020 Singapore General Election candidate for Pasir Ris – Punggol GRC.
In the posting, Prabu also advocates for a form of activism when one is purchasing their daily necessity, as he strongly believes that ‘capitalism is democracy in daily life’.
“We buy and ‘vote for’ goods, services and products with our hard earned money; for brands that we support, while avoiding or boycotting goods, services and products that we do not want to support,” explained Prabu.
“We might be able to make a difference with our collective market participation of buying and supporting local small businesses such as HDB heartland neighborhood hawkers, coffeeshops, markets, while avoiding big businesses and global corporations.”
The final point that Prabu touched on is the sale of HDB flats, which have been making the news lately with Tampines joining the “million-dollar club” recently, with its first public housing unit selling for $1,013,000.
“Directly or indirectly we are not able to avoid high rentals and high real estate prices though as the government through land sales as well as government linked companies control the real estate & property market,” added Prabu.
“News reports of Housing & Development Board losing money were out in the last few weeks, which sounded ridiculous & unbelievable, despite new BTO flats which are supposedly subsidised priced as high as $800,000.”