THE Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (Pofma) Office will issue correction directions to ex-GIC economist Yeoh Lam Keong and alternative news site The Independent Singapore for making false statements regarding the government’s fiscal surpluses, the Ministry of Finance (MOF) said in a press statement on Friday (Nov 18).

On Nov 7, Yeoh published two Facebook posts stating that “...we have a $30 bn structural fiscal surplus that we have not even begun to publicly delineate clear spending big plans for.”

The Independent Singapore then reproduced Yeoh’s statement in two of its articles dated Nov 9 and Nov 12 respectively.

In its statement, MOF said: “Yeoh’s statement claims that there are $30 billion in structural fiscal surpluses that are available to the government for spending. This is untrue.”

It added that the government recorded on average a fiscal balance of S$2.2 billion per annum over the last two decades. This excludes FY2020, which had a “significant” fiscal deficit due to Covid-19 expenditures.

“It is therefore untrue that the Government has “a $30bn structural fiscal surplus” that is available for spending yearly”, it reiterated.

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In addition, the Constitution “defines clearly” the fiscal rules for the government, it said. “Any public spending beyond these fiscal rules means that we will be using more from the past reserves, and leaving behind less for the next generation.”

It added that the government is “not in a position to freely or unilaterally decide to spend any part of the past reserves”, and that any drawing of the past reserves is subject to the president’s concurrence.

This will be the second Pofma correction direction to be issued to Yeoh in the space of five weeks. He was issued the first on Oct 14 for making false and misleading statements about the Housing Board’s deficits and Singapore’s past reserves. Alternative news site The Online Citizen was issued a correction direction as well for making the same statements.

Both Yeoh and The Independent Singapore will be required to insert a notice against their original posts or articles, with a link to the government’s clarification.