Fiscal sustainability the focus at conference

Singapore

IF SINGAPORE is to be a sustainable society, it needs to address the growing disconnection between the people's expectations and government policies, said GIC president Lim Siong Guan on Tuesday.

In giving the keynote address at The Business Times Leadership Conference, he said that, in the early days of Singapore's development, the nation was still short of financial security, like that of a poor man.

The prevailing outlook in 1960s and 1970s Singapore was, as he put it: "Earn what you can , save what you can, spend on what you need; we never know what tomorrow will bring, so be prepared and save for a rainy day."

But Singaporeans now perceive that the government is still behaving like a poor man, despite the economic progress the nation has chalked up; in short, Singapore has progressed and achieved first-world status, but the people think its government has remained stuck in a fiscally-…