Happy New Year everyone! We hope you had as much fun counting down to the new year as we did! After all, I'm sure most of you couldn't wait to say goodbye to 2008...
Apologies for the recent lack of updates, but here's our very first entry of 2009, which contains some sobering but nevertheless important news for the year ahead.
The government has reduced its growth forecast for Singapore's economy in 2009 to between -2 and 1%, down from the previous range of between -1 and 2%.
This comes after the economy shrank by a whopping 12.5% between October and December of last year, the biggest quarterly decline since 1976!
But some economists feel that the government's revised forecast is still too optimistic, suggesting that negative growth is almost certain. For instance, CIMB-GK economist Song Seng Wun paints a worse-case scenario where the economy could shrink by 2-5%, while employment could return to the 2003 peak of 5%.
The level of unemployment will definitely be closely watched by the government, which has already unveiled a $600 million training package that aims to persuade bosses to retrain, and not retrench workers.
Analysts also expect the saving of jobs to be a top priority for the upcoming Budget, to be announced on the 22nd of this month.