700,000 new homes to be unveiled by 2030

200,000 of these will be ready by 2016.

According to OCBC, after five days of intense debate, Singapore’s Parliament passed the amended White Paper on Population about a week ago. As a brief recap, the amended White Paper outlined several proposals to address the country’s demographic challenges. 

They include (i) enhancing existing marriage and parenthood measures, (ii) taking in about 30,000 PRs and 15,000 to 25,000 new citizens per year, (iii) creating sufficient PMET jobs for two-thirds of Singaporeans by 2030, (iv) moderating overall workforce growth to 1% to 2% per year up to 2020 (and about 1% per year up to 2030), and (v) investing in infrastructure to support a population of 5.8 to 6.0m in 2020 (and 6.5 to 6.9m in 2030).

Here's more from OCBC:

In a major change in policy, the government will now invest and build public housing and infrastructure ahead of demand. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said that the government was blind-sided by some international events and had not expected the population growth to surge ahead of infrastructure in the last decade.

Acknowledging the problems of inadequate housing and congestions on the transportation network, the government will now build in a bigger buffer to deal with the uncertainties in economic cycles.

Specifically, the government will build up to 700,000 new homes by 2030, bringing the total housing supply to 1.9m housing units (from the current 1.2m units).

Of these, almost 200,000 will be ready by 2016. As for the transport network, the government plans to double the rail network length to 360km by 2030.

We reviewed the Population White Paper and believe that the most direct beneficiary is the infrastructure sector (public works providers as opposed to construction-developers).

Regardless of whether the population reaches 6.9m by 2030, the government needs to roll out various housing and transport infrastructure projects over the medium-term horizon to ease current congestion and overcrowding issues.