Nurturing the shoots of recovery

THIS WEEK'S TOPIC: What Budget measures are needed as the focus shifts from emergency support back to growth?

Lawrence Loh Director, Centre for Governance and Sustainability NUS Business School The Budget will have to advance the delicate synergisation of 3 interacting forces - infections, inflation and inflection. First, the coronavirus is not expected to vanish any time soon. Businesses and individuals will have to live with this reality of continued infections - the Budget will need to transit from an assistance to an integration thrust, more through adaptation and transformation. Second, rising price levels will have profound effects on costs. Fiscal injections have to enable growth and yet not lead to economic overheating. Third and most of all, the Budget will be a clear watershed. While there are challenges of infections and inflation, the expected economic recovery will provide an appropriate time window for economic inflection.

David Sandison Singapore Practice Leader Grant Thornton We assume that growth will naturally follow the removal of emergency support. Not so fast. I have long been concerned about what we will find under the Covid covers once they are rolled back. The wealth gap is not confined to individuals. Businesses that have held on for dear life may finally succumb, to be subsumed within businesses with deeper pockets. Normally, we should allow nature to take its course. Survival of the fittest. But these are not normal times. Rather than further intervention from the fiscal budget, we should perhaps consider extended legal protections to afford some breathing space once normality is resumed. Then let us talk about growth.