Price Controls
Singapore has tightened monetary policy this year, while neighbors from Thailand to the Philippines cut interest rates, spurring gains in the currency even as the government predicts gross domestic product will rise at the slowest pace in three years.
Price gains in Singapore have reached 4 percent or more every month bar one since November 2010, more than double the 1.9 percent average in the past two decades. Inflation is forecast by the central bank to average more than 4.5 percent this year.
“A wider range of services has been developed, catering to high-end needs,” Leong said. “We’ve won the battle as the destination to live in because we’ve focused on the non- financial aspects of growth, meaning we’ve invested in greening Singapore, making it easy for families to live here.”
The increase in foreign workers has also led Singaporeans to complain that overseas workers deprive locals of jobs, drive up prices and lead to congestion on public transport. That helped opposition parties win record support in last year’s general elections and prompted the ruling People’s Action Party to slow down the intake of foreign workers.
RBC Wealth Management, part of Toronto-based Royal Bank of Canada, and EIU, a London-based unit of The Economist Group, surveyed 558 individuals who have at least $1 million of investable assets through June to October.