The Government announced and state media reported that the economy had grown by 4.4% in the second quarter on a year-on-year basis. This was itself a slowdown from the advance estimate of 4.8% announced in July though of course the downward revision was not admitted in the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) press release. To paint a rosier picture, MTI said this was faster than the 3.8% growth recorded in the first quarter.
However reading a little further I discovered that far from growth having accelerated in the second quarter, it was actually negative. On a month-on-month seasonally adjusted annualized basis the economy contracted by 0.2% . This should have been the significant news since it is a snapshot of how the economy is actually doing now rather than compared with the past. The figure of 4.4% is particularly misleading because there was a “circuit breaker” (the PAP’s euphemism for lockdown) during the second quarter of 2021.
One of the benefits of having an independent media, whose duty is to hold the country’s leaders accountable rather than to ensure that they remain in office enriching themselves with millions of taxpayers’ funds and passing out plum jobs to their children, spouses and relatives, then the negative growth would have been highlighted as it has been in the UK (where the economy contracted by 0.1% in the same period, a better performance than Singapore). and in the US. Furthermore our Statistics Department is just part of MTI and not independent like in the UK, where by law the Office for National Statistics is separate from the Government.
A lot more at https://shrtcô.de/io5Ks6
However reading a little further I discovered that far from growth having accelerated in the second quarter, it was actually negative. On a month-on-month seasonally adjusted annualized basis the economy contracted by 0.2% . This should have been the significant news since it is a snapshot of how the economy is actually doing now rather than compared with the past. The figure of 4.4% is particularly misleading because there was a “circuit breaker” (the PAP’s euphemism for lockdown) during the second quarter of 2021.
One of the benefits of having an independent media, whose duty is to hold the country’s leaders accountable rather than to ensure that they remain in office enriching themselves with millions of taxpayers’ funds and passing out plum jobs to their children, spouses and relatives, then the negative growth would have been highlighted as it has been in the UK (where the economy contracted by 0.1% in the same period, a better performance than Singapore). and in the US. Furthermore our Statistics Department is just part of MTI and not independent like in the UK, where by law the Office for National Statistics is separate from the Government.
A lot more at https://shrtcô.de/io5Ks6
