Paula Eastwood: What a year we have had!

Globally we have seen financial institutions teetering on the brink of collapse, global brand names erased from the highstreet ….along with the highstreet themselves in many cases. We have seen many governments incur historically unheard of deficits, off the scale borrowing and decimating forests in their haste to print more money. As if the financial crisis wasn’t enough, we have also had to witness major natural disasters in the form of earthquakes in Haiti, floods and mud slides and some of the worst blizzards since records began sweeping across Europe and the US.

As if that wasn't enough……along comes the movie 2012! You could be left wondering what the world is coming to!

I don’t believe we are sufficiently experienced to answer that question today but we can consider the budget and whether Singapore truly is on the road to recovery. By all accounts, Singapore has weathered the storms well. Judging from the tenor of this year’s Budget speech, the general outlook is the storms have passed. The implementation of the Resilience Package helped kept confidence up and infused a much needed stability to businesses, labour and the economy.

But is the worst really over?

A significant amount of uncertainty hangs in the air judging by economic data coming out of the G3 countries. The Singapore Ministry of Trade and Industry has revised short term growth forecast from 3 to 5% to 4.5 to 6%. The thrust of Budget 2010 was clear in the need for Singapore to increase productivity and upgrade the quality and competitiveness of the small and medium enterprises.

Is this achievable given Singapore inter-dependence on international trade?

Many of the tax changes in the budget focused on this key productivity theme with tax concessions around R&D and incentives for spending in this area. Some of the things we have been asking for finally made an appearance in this budget showing the Government responds to feedback and initiatives. Sadly for some, this didn’t include any reduction in the personal tax rates or tax band. On the contrary, there appeared to be a concerted effort to subtly refocus the tax burden to those who can most afford it.

So what are some of the specifics in this year’s budget, how will it benefit companies? Much of the budget detail is still to be revealed in the months ahead, and many of these will require further clarification. In the meantime, if you didn’t get anything on your wish list, you can at least drown your sorrows with the additional duty-free allowance for wine or beer from 1st April 2010!