Daily Briefing: Why it's not yet time to ease property measures; Are 1MDB penalties heavy enough?

And Singapore condo prices recover in May.

From Bloomberg via Yahoo!: Singapore’s central bank said it’s not yet time to ease property curbs and the adjustments made by the government in March don’t signal an unwinding of the measures. While the property market has stabilized, “it is, however, not time yet to ease the cooling measures. They remain necessary,” Ravi Menon, managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, told reporters on Thursday at the release of the bank’s annual report. Mortgage rates are very low and “the risk of a renewed unsustainable surge in property prices is not trivial,” he said. The city state’s government imposed a number of restrictions beginning in 2009 to cool a red hot market, causing prices to decline for more than three years. It relaxed some measures in March, but left most of the restrictions in place.

From Bloomberg via Yahoo!: The penalties Singapore handed out in relation to its probe into 1Malaysia Development Bhd.-related fund flows were strong enough to send “deterrent” signals, said the city’s regulatory chief. The fines were in line with domestic legislation, Monetary Authority of Singapore Managing Director Ravi Menon told reporters at a briefing on Thursday, when asked if the penalties had been too light. Following a two-year review into 1MDB, Singapore imposed a total of S$29.1 million ($21 million) in financial penalties on eight banks, including DBS Group Holdings Ltd., the country’s largest. The MAS also issued orders banning four former bank employees from financial activities, and has notified another three individuals of its intention for similar action.

From PropertyGuru via Yahoo!: Overall prices of non-landed private homes here rose 0.4 percent in May on a monthly basis, reversing the 0.8 percent decline in the April, revealed flash estimates of the NUS Singapore Residential Price Index (SRPI). Excluding small units, prices in the central region increased by 1.3 percent, an improvement from the 0.4 percent dip in the previous month. On the other hand, the non-central region posted a drop of 0.3 percent compared to a larger slide of 1.0 percent in April.