- Joined
- Oct 30, 2014
- Messages
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Which government in the world loses billions of dollars each year building homes for ungrateful sinkies?? PAP is good, and yet so many samsters are ungrateful. My RC friends have to work harder to explain HDB policies and organize more outreach activities for residents to build better bonds between the government and the people. Really thankless task.
http://therealsingapore.com/content...es-lose-money-building-hdb-flats-singaporeans
Khaw Boon Wan, the Minister of National Development explained that HDB will continue to see a rising net deficit over the next few years.
He said that this was still due to the ramping up of supply of HDB flats since FY2013.
Khaw Boon Wan was responding to a question about the implications of the HDB’s deficit.
Minister Khaw again insisted that the government loses money when they sell HDB Flats to buyers.
He explained that the CPF housing grants are paid out by the government and the construction and land costs of the HDB flat are greater than the prices paid by buyers after grants.
He said that the Home Ownership Programme and the spike in supply and upgrading programs since 2013 has continued to make HDB’s deficit bigger.
He did not indicate what would happen in the future or what HDB’s deficit meant.
While HDB may be making losses from the sale of flats, it is questionable whether this is still true for the government as a whole.
HDB pays for the construction costs, land and is responsible for housing grants and collects only the final price that flats are sold to buyers for.
While it may be true that the balance sheet for these transactions is negative, land is actually bought by HDB from the Singapore Land Authority, another government body.
What is the profit that the Singapore Land authority is making on the land sold to HDB? If this is deducted from HDB’s deficit, would HDB really still be making losses each year?
