Retail Shop at Changi Airport (Photo by Nicky Loh from Bloomberg)

People’s Voice Party chief, Lim Tean made a Facebook post on Friday (27 December 2019), commenting how the ongoing decline in retails sales at Changi Airport shows the sad state of Singapore’s economy.
He shared that he was told by a supervisor of duty free shop that this year was the worst Christmas season in her living memory and the sales has decreased sharply from previous years.
He wrote in a post: “This is a reflection of the dreadful state of our economy and how Singaporeans’ purchasing power have been eroded significantly by the disastrous economic policies pursued by Mr “New Taxes” Heng and the PAP Government.”
He pointed out that with all sorts of increase in taxes and living costs, the things under Mr “New Taxes” Heng [Swee Keat] and his colleagues will only get worse.
“They always know when to release pessimistic news – when people’s attentions are focused elsewhere.”
Lim Tean pointed to a report on Christmas’s eve that indicated the smaller firms have cut back on expansion plans for at least the first 6 months of 2020.
This report is based on a quarterly survey by the Singapore Business Federation (SBF) and information services company Experian that is used to compile an index that measures SME business sentiment.
3,600 SMEs were polled between 7 Oct and 15 Nov and looked at key indicators such as turnover, hiring and access to financing.

According to the index, retail confidence to expand for the upcoming quarter is lowest since 2015 (other than 20163Q).
In the end of his posting, Lim Tean promised that there will be a dramatic improvement in the lives of Singaporeans when they make a change in General Election 2020.

 
The slowdown of Singapore’s economic growth remain in the fourth quarter, as stated in the report of retail sales in Singapore from Focus Economics.
Meanwhile the statistic from Department of Statistic Singapore also showed that the retail sales dropped 4.3% in October 2019 compared to October 2018, while excluding motor vehicles, the retail sales fall 0.6%.
As for Changi Aiport, it reported a concession sales of S$2.8 billion in FY2018/19, registering an 8.1% year-on-year increase. The results are not out yet for this fiscal year but its Dec release shared that all regions experienced growth in passenger numbers. It handled 5.72 million passenger movements in November 2019, an increase of 5.7% compared to the same period last year.
Reported by TODAY, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong confirmed the current status of Singapore’s economy by saying this to the Singapore media during Association of ASEAN-ROK Commemorative Summit, and bilateral visit of South Korea last month

 “It is not surprising that Singapore’s economy has slowed down, given the slowdown in the world economy,”

Under the Lim Tean’s Facebook post, many netizens have spoken up about the government tax policy and expressed their dissatisfaction with the current government.
Most of them questioned the increase of taxes and particularly Goods & Services Tax (GST) as they believe that raising taxes will not help the economy to grow. Introduced by Finance Minister Heng in 2018, GST will be raised from 7% to 9% for the next Parliamentary term.

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