But he said the Government would not reduce this deficit, either by trimming its expenditures or raising additional revenues.

'The larger deficit is an appropriate fiscal stance in the context of an economy that has entered a slowdown,' said Mr Tharman in his written reply on Monday to a question in Parliament from Nominated MP Gautam Banerjee, who had asked whether the 2008 budget should be re-examined in light of the global financial crisis and its impact on the Singapore economy.

'We have in fact raised expenditures over the course of the year, so as to allow for a more expansionary budget in the current economic environment. We will be able to fund the larger deficit from the surpluses we accumulated in FY07, when we had unexpectedly higher revenues.'

(truncated)

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In budget 2007, it was announced that the estimated budget is a deficit of S$690 million (http://www.mof.gov.sg/budget_2007/budget_speech/downloads/FY2007_Budget_Highlights.pdf - p10 / table 2.1). Later it turned out to be a surplus of S$6450 million (http://www.mof.gov.sg/budget_2008/speech_toc/downloads/FY2008_Budget_Highlights.pdf - p4 / table 1.1).

In budget 2008, it was announced that the estimated budget is a deficit of S$800 million and this news article above reported that it might be a deficit of S$2400 million or more due to the economy downturn and lower than estimated growth figures.

I would like to adopt a wait-and-see approach to the budget 2009 (which might be announced in Jan 2009 instead of Feb 2009) to know the official announced figure.

Comments?