Singapore spent S$72.3 billion on Covid-19 in FY2020 and FY2021, less than budgeted
SINGAPORE’S government spent S$72.3 billion on Covid-19 in FY 2020 and 2021, less than the S$100 billion committed in its budgets for those years, said Second Minister for Finance Indranee Rajah in Parliament on Tuesday (Sep 13).
Of this, S$13.4 billion was spent on public health measures, S$50.6 billion was used to protect jobs and S$8.3 billion was for direct household and social support, she said in response to a supplementary question from People’s Action Party (PAP) Member of Parliament (MP) Foo Mee Har (West Coast GRC).
For FY 2020, the government had initially set aside loan capital in anticipation of a tight credit market, but this was eventually not needed, she explained.
“We had some under-utilisation in public health spending,” she added. “These under-utilisations were offset, however, by additional funding for the various support packages rolled out... over the Heightened Alerts and stabilisation phases from May to November 2021.”
Foo had asked if the government would consider commissioning a special review of controls and checks in relation to pandemic-related procurement and expenditure. To this, Indranee replied that the Ministry of Finance had already started its review of such controls and checks earlier this year.
Agencies are conducting their respective audits on Covid-19 pandemic-related procurement and expenditure to ensure that “transactions are bona fide and that there is no erroneous payment”, she said. This is on top of the earlier-released Auditor-General’s thematic audit of Covid-related procurement and expenditure.
“The government has put in place a number of measures to mitigate fraud risk,” she added.
Replying to a separate question, Minister for Health Ong Ye Kung said that hospitalisations have fallen in the most recent Omicron infection wave, compared to previous Covid-19 waves.
But he added: “However, it is not possible to estimate a hospitalisation incidence rate which our healthcare capacity can accommodate, or can handle, because this is also a function of the infectiousness of the variant and the number of people who get infected.”
Responding to other questions from PAP MP Yip Hon Weng (Yio Chu Kang SMC), Ong reiterated that the use of the Noravax vaccine for young persons aged 12 to 17 is still under independent evaluation, adding: “Novavax has not submitted the application for its vaccine to be administered to children under 12 years old.”
As for the Moderna vaccine for young children under 5 years old and boosters for children aged 6 to 12, the intention remains to have a combined vaccination exercise around end-October or early November, as Covid cases are low for these age groups and the older age group is “getting into examination mode”, he added, in response to a supplementary question from Yip.
Ong also addressed a question from Workers’ Party MP Jamus Lim (Sengkang GRC) about when vaccination-differentiated safe management measures (VDS) would be removed. He reiterated that the government is reviewing Singapore’s vaccination requirements, moving from an approach of counting number of doses and boosters, to one of ensuring that vaccination is ‘up to date’.
The government expects to complete this review in the next few months, and will review VDS at the same time, he said.
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