Jeisilan Sivalingam: Singaporeans have lower purchasing power than Malaysians

During a rally speech last night, National Solidarity Party (NSP) candidate Jeisilan Sivalingam took the PAP regime to task for its perennial obsession with GDP growth at the expense of the welfare of ordinary Singaporeans.

Though Singapore’s GDP has grown tremendously for the last five years thereby boosting the salaries of PAP ministers, the median income of Singaporeans remain stagnant at S$2,500 monthly. Not only that, their domestic purchasing power is now longer than the Malaysians and Russians. (read more here)

Citing an internationl study done by Swiss bank UBS in 2010, Jeisilan said:

“Singapore has a lower purchasing power than Malaysians. Can you believe that?”

He added the influx of immigrants had also depressed the wages of local workers and led to an overall decline in the standard of living, which was supported by a Wall Street Journa editorial in January 2010.

PAP leaders have been harping on their ‘excellent’ performance in increasing GDP growth which has been abandoned as an indicator of quality of life by most prominent economists, including Nobel laureate Joseph Stilgitz.

GDP is simply the total economic output produced by a country and it can be artificially inflated for example, by mass importing cheap foreign workers to depress labor costs. It says nothing about the purchasing power or quality of life of the people.

It is strange that PAP leaders NEVER mention our poor domestic purchasing power which is a far more accurate economic indicator of the reality on the ground.

Many Singaporeans are ‘asset rich’ because of their HDB flats, but are ‘cash poor’ after spending the bulk of their salaries on housing loans and other living essentials, thereby leaving little spare cash in their hands.

In 2006, Singapore has a domestic purchasing power of 50.8 (by hourly income) which is less than half of Zurich (115.6). It decreased to a mere 38.8 in 2010 while Zurich’ remained stable at 110.

Though Singapore is purportedly a First World nation, the low domestic purchasing power of Singaporeans put it along the likes of Doha (Qatar), Warsaw (Poland) and Bratislava (Slovakia), far below the other first world cities in Asia such as Tokyo, Seoul, Taipei and Hong Kong.

Singapore should not be misled by the rosy statistics churned out daily by the PAP-controlled media. The fact remains that after 5 years of PAP rule, our wages have remained stagnant, the cost of living has sky-rocketed and the income gap between the rich and the poor has widened considerably, a dismal performance by the world’s most expensive government.

Read more here.