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Tue, Mar 09, 2010
my paper
Enough private housing for citizens and foreigners
BY Koh Hui Theng
CLOSE to 90 per cent of all private- property transactions last year involved Singaporeans, National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan said yesterday.
He cited this to debunk the perception that foreign buyers were pushing up private-housing demand, which Member of Parliament Liang Eng Hwa (Holland-Bukit Timah GRC) raised yesterday.
He added: 'There is ample supply of private housing in the pipeline to meet demand.' Similarly, most transactions of public housing involved Singaporeans, he added.
The Government does not intend to introduce more new measures to cool the property market for now, as measures taken in January had helped deter speculation, he said.
To free land to meet privatesector demand, the Government is moving several centrally-located agencies to Jurong, Kallang and Paya Lebar. For example, the Ministry of National Development and its statutory boards, Agri-food & Veterinary Authority and Building and Construction Authority, will sink roots at Jurong Gateway by 2015.
They will be joined by Ministry of Environment and Water Resources and its statutory boards, PUB and National Environment Agency.
The Workforce Development Agency will move to Paya Lebar Central, where its new Continuing Education and Training centre will be built by 2013.
The Government will tweak the reserve-list system, which makes available, if necessary, extra sites whose use is flexible, on top of sites already released.
It will cut the deposit for successful reserve-list site applicants from 5 to 3 per cent, and cap it at $5 million with immediate effect, to help developers with cash flow. It will also provide a larger supply and wider variety of sites in the reserve list
in the second half of the year.
It will also introduce a $250 million fund to co-fund construction companies' adoption of new technology and upgrading of workers' skills. This is to help the industry improve its current 0.7 per cent productivity growth ' half of Australia's and a third of Japan's.
my paper
Enough private housing for citizens and foreigners
BY Koh Hui Theng
CLOSE to 90 per cent of all private- property transactions last year involved Singaporeans, National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan said yesterday.
He cited this to debunk the perception that foreign buyers were pushing up private-housing demand, which Member of Parliament Liang Eng Hwa (Holland-Bukit Timah GRC) raised yesterday.
He added: 'There is ample supply of private housing in the pipeline to meet demand.' Similarly, most transactions of public housing involved Singaporeans, he added.
The Government does not intend to introduce more new measures to cool the property market for now, as measures taken in January had helped deter speculation, he said.
To free land to meet privatesector demand, the Government is moving several centrally-located agencies to Jurong, Kallang and Paya Lebar. For example, the Ministry of National Development and its statutory boards, Agri-food & Veterinary Authority and Building and Construction Authority, will sink roots at Jurong Gateway by 2015.
They will be joined by Ministry of Environment and Water Resources and its statutory boards, PUB and National Environment Agency.
The Workforce Development Agency will move to Paya Lebar Central, where its new Continuing Education and Training centre will be built by 2013.
The Government will tweak the reserve-list system, which makes available, if necessary, extra sites whose use is flexible, on top of sites already released.
It will cut the deposit for successful reserve-list site applicants from 5 to 3 per cent, and cap it at $5 million with immediate effect, to help developers with cash flow. It will also provide a larger supply and wider variety of sites in the reserve list
in the second half of the year.
It will also introduce a $250 million fund to co-fund construction companies' adoption of new technology and upgrading of workers' skills. This is to help the industry improve its current 0.7 per cent productivity growth ' half of Australia's and a third of Japan's.