Employees in Singapore can look forward to a 5% increase in wages in 2008, according to some survey that was conducted (and I hope they were not from SPH). However, it was also foreseen that this 5% will not go a long way in increasing the spending power of the Singaporean due to the high inflation rate that Singapore is going through. This may not even cover the GST increase given the roll over effects of goods and services. In addition, many goods and services saw sky high hikes due to the increase in fuel costs. Of course, there is the occasional opportunist that doesn’t make this any easier.

As a result, this increase may be hardly felt - which means that the average Singaporean may still find himself having about the same amount left for himself after paying for his usual spending. At the end of the day, it’s still the usual demand/supply forces that pushes a worker’s salary higher. Such forces can be seen in highly competitive markets such as finance, IT and communications. If you are not in an area which is in demand, I think you can jolly well forget about the 5% too.

WAGES are set to increase in the year ahead, but inflation may curb the purchasing power of your fatter paycheque, according to a survey on salary trends.

ECA International’s Salary Trends Survey 2007/2008 showed that the average Singapore worker can expect his salary to increase by 5 per cent this year — a figure that would be just on par with the inflation rate predicted by some economists last week.

This means that in real terms, there may be no wage increase at all.

"For a developed economy such as Singapore, this level of wage increase is high," said Mr Lee Quane, general manager of human resource membership firm ECA International, which conducted the survey. The survey polled about 250 multinational corporations (MNCs) in 47 countries.

"But we have had high inflation which is going to undermine our purchasing power throughout 2008," he added.

The picture is not all bleak, however.

Mr Quane explained that the expected 5-per-cent increase is deduced from companies using the base salaries of their workers. It excludes performance-related pay and other bonuses typically paid to managerial staff, which would have boosted the percentage increase.

Effects of the credit crunch in the United States are also not expected to be widely felt, according to another survey by recruitment firm Hudson.

Only 8 per cent of respondents felt it would affect their hiring plans negatively, said the Hudson survey, which polled 659 employment decision-makers from various MNCs here.

Half the employers surveyed also plan to increase salaries by 10 to 20 per cent to attract new staff. One in five employers said they planned to pay 21 to 30 per cent more.

While the banking and finance, and IT and telecommunications sectors are offering the biggest pay increases, they are also the ones seeing the highest percentage of staff being poached in a tight labour market.

"Employers are paying big increases in salaries and bonuses to attract and retain talented candidates but still face rising turnover rates," Mr Mark Sparrow, Hudson’s Singapore country manager said.

Wage increases are reflective of a country’s economic growth as well as its rate of inflation, said ECA’s Mr Quane.

For example, the fact that wage increases in many Asian economies are overtaking Eastern Europe’s is a sign that growth in the latter is stabilising.
Singapore’s expected wage increase is lower than that of its fast-developing Asian counterparts like India and Vietnam, which have expected wage increases of 14 and 10 per cent, respectively.

However, it fares well compared to developed economies like those in Japan (3 per cent) and Western Europe (3.9 per cent).

Article obtained from todayonline.com on 18th January 2008

Seriously, I am probably not the first, nor the last to complain about public transport and how it falls below expectations. Really, if public transport is that good, people may seriously consider public transport as one of their traveling options. Naturally, I have some peeves about the public transport service and let me know if you agree with me:

1. Frequency of buses. Seriously, I have never seen anything as erratic as bus timings. How can a bus be consistently arriving at 45 minutes interval during peak hours when the chart says 12-15 minutes? Even at off-peak hours, it’s supposed to be 15-18 minutes only!
2. Overcrowded buses. It never fails to baffle me how bus transport companies, knowing peak hours, do not schedule for more buses. I end up having to miss 3 to 4 buses before I can squeeze onto one. Considering #1, this usually means 1 hour or more of waiting.
3. Last bus not matching arrival of last train. Catching the last train home does not necessarily mean that I can get home on time. Mainly because the last train arrives much later than the last bus. Given the doubt that it’s a catch-22 situation, the last train reaches my place at 12:20am while the last bus is at 11:59pm. There is no catch-22. It’s called badly uncoordinated services.
4. Cleanliness of buses. This never fails to eek me. There are small cockroaches, some silver fishes, bugs, and other creepy crawlies. However, I do see bus captains cleaning their buses after the bus arrive at the terminal. What I suspect is a major smoke-out of the buses every fortnight or month. I hope this does not translate to fare hikes though.
5. Racing F1 buses. Come to think of it, I kinda enjoy buses that speed… to a certain extend. However, some drivers do take it over the limit and it felt like I was on the F1 track for a moment. I know that F1 is coming to town… still…

And here are some things that I hope to see included in the overhaul:

1. Bus stamps for everyone. I foresee that it’d be something that I might need in the future, so it’d be good for them to start implementing it - and no, the SBS transit Season Pass doesn’t quite count. We are looking at cross-service concession passes.
2. Ask who? Ask Iris doesn’t seem to work as well as it was meant to. Buses that were meant to arrive 5 minutes later were at the bus stop while "ghost" buses that were meant to be there… weren’t there.
3. Better connectivity. For me to get to get from Adam road to Orchard, I can either take any bus to Bukit Timah Road, cross the overhead bridge and take 171/174 or… walk to Dunearn Road. Hmm… both involve walks of 200m or more. Not a good choice if you are carrying heavy stuffs. No cabs too. Remember the fare hike?
4. More timely buses. This is a little hard especially when there may be road congestions. I’m not sure how this can be solved, but how about some form of alternative routes so that people can connect to other buses that goes to their destination?
5. Coordinated timings. One of the biggest peeves. Please time the bus and trains. It’s no point catching the last train back if I have to walk 3 km home from the station. Yes, some people are telling me that it’s better than walking 20 km. Then again, isn’t this supposed to be public transport? Serving the public? Do it well!

I’m sure there are many others, and it’d be nice to hear them too. I hope someone’s reading this blog… and oh, feel free to add on. =)

Sun Microsystems - made famous by their Sun machines and SunOS, has agreed to purchase MySQL for $1 billion, promising to push the open-source DBMS to larger corporations. MySQL has always been the DBMS of choice for freelance programmers because it can be easily set up and configured - with a large community for support.

With Sun’s acquisition, and pending further analysis and information, this could go either way in that:

• part of it will remain free and supported by the community while another part becomes commercialised (pretty much like how it is now)
• the entire thing goes commercial, with a watered-down version for free

This is pretty much like where Redhat was headed for - Redhat Enterprise for corporate and Fedora Core for enthusiasts.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Sun Microsystems Inc. has agreed to buy open-source software maker MySQL AB for $1 billion, beefing up the server maker’s database offerings with a company whose technology is used by some of the world’s biggest Web sites.

Santa Clara-based Sun, in separate announcements before the market opened, said its second quarter revenue would narrowly exceed Wall Street estimates. It also said profit would fall at the high end of analysts’ expectations. The company revealed its preliminary results ahead of schedule.

Sun is paying $800 million in cash and assuming $200 million in options to acquire MySQL. The Swedish company makes open-source database software used by companies such as online search leader Google Inc., popular Internet hangout Facebook Inc. and Finnish phone maker Nokia Corp.

Sun said the deal will help spread MySQL’s software to large corporations, which have been the biggest customers of Sun’s servers and software, and boost its distribution through Sun’s relationships with other server makers such as IBM Corp. and Dell Inc.

The acquisition, expected to close in the third or fourth quarter, takes pressure off Sun to spend some of the cash it’s been accumulating. It also bolsters its software offerings with a well-known known name in Internet data retrieval.

Sun also said it expects net income of between $230 million to $265 million, or 28 cents to 32 cents per share. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial were expecting profit of between 22 cents and 38 cents.

Sun said it expects to notch about $3.6 billion in sales during the second quarter. Analysts were expecting, on average, $3.58 billion in sales.

Article obtained from Associate Press on 18th January 2008

The government has taken initiatives to ensure that bus travel will be shorter (at most 1.5 times as long as travel by car), more convenient and more comfortable. Part of the process is to make it mandatory for vehicles to give way to buses exiting from bus bays and creating more bus lanes where public buses have exclusive use during certain times of the day.

Buses will also be given priority at traffic junctions, which is already observed with the city area but is usually hijacked by unsuspecting drivers in the designated lanes. Needless to say, drivers would need to pay attention to when these will be in effect to avoid being slapped with heavy fines and demerit points. Ultimately, the bus commuter would be able to get from one place to another in comfort and in the shortest possible time via public transport as the nation prepares herself for a population of 14.3 million in 2020. In the mean time, bus routes will be planned by LTA by end 2009.

BUS commuters have long been second-class road users. Not anymore. Transport Minister Raymond Lim on Friday unveiled a slew of initiatives that will make commuting by bus much faster and more comfortable than it is today.

First off, the Land Transport Authority will assume the role as centralised bus route planner, so that commuters in all areas of Singapore are better served and waiting times are cut.

‘Currently, the two public transport operators plan the bus routes within their areas of operation based on commercial considerations, subject to minimum service obligations,” the minister said. He said this has led to some services running at intervals of more than half an hour.

After LTA has taken over as central bus route planner by end-2009, it will open up the bus market to more players. Today, the market is dominated by SBS Transit, with SMRT Buses as much smaller second player. The LTA will invite tenders from any company keen to ply specific ‘route parcels’ to be drawn up.

Secondly, fares will be purely distance-based, and the current transfer penalty will be removed. So if a commuter decides to change bus (or go from a bus to a train) so as to get to his destination faster, he will pay the same fare as someone who does not break up his journey.

This is because the new bus services structure ahead will be a ‘hub-and-spoke’ system (as opposed to the current system of many direct services), and might require more transfers. ‘Transfers are part and parcel of a hub-and-spoke system,’ Mr Lim said.

Then, the Government will roll out measures to ensure that buses get right of way on the road. There will be more bus lanes, with the length of full-day bus lanes trebling from 7km today to 23km by June.

It will be mandatory for motorists to give way to buses exiting bus bays; and buses will have priority signal lights at major junctions. With these moves, it hopes to raise the average speed of buses to 20-25kmh by next year - from 19kmh today.

The Government will also build more integrated transport hubs - where bus and rail services meet. There are currently three (Ang Mo Kio, Toa Payoh and Sengkang), with two more (Boon Lay and Clementi) coming up in the next couple of years. Five more will be built over the next decade.

Finally, integrated transport information, which will help commuters plan their journeys as well as let them know when their buses are arriving.

‘By 2015, our target is for 80 per cent of public transport commuters to complete their journeys within an hour, from the point they set off, to arriving at their destination - up from 71 per cent today,’ the minister said.

He added that by 2020, travelling by public transport should not take more than 1.5 times than a journey by car - down from the current 1.7 times.

Article obtained from straitstimes.com on 18th January 2008

The Singapore government has decided to take back control of the bus routes in Singapore, effectively deciding on which routes are available. However, it is not known if it is compulsory for the bus companies to take on any particular routes. The task of planning the routes will be done by LTA, which had a history of making decisions that do not go well with the people in general one of which is the implementation of ERPs in heartlands.

However, it seems like this will be a complete overhaul in the transport system which will be commuter-centric as the government prepares for a population of 14.3 million by 2020. The government also aims to address common complaints by commuters on erratic frequency of buses and the need to change many buses to get to their destination. While some people feel that it’s a little late, some have recognised that it’s better late than never.

BUS travel in Singapore is set to undergo some radical changes to get commuters to their destination faster, with fewer transfers and in some cases, at lower fares.

The overhaul will take place over the next few years in two stages.

First, the Government will take back control of the planning of routes from the two main public transport companies. Then, the bus market will be opened up to more competition.

Transport Minister Raymond Lim announced the plans to make public transport a choice mode and a viable alternative to the car on Friday morning when he launched the Land Transport Gallery.

This is the first of three key policy speeches he will deliver this month on how travel by bus, rail and private vehicles will change to move 5.5 million around.

The changes are the outcome of a major review which started more than a year ago to take stock of a 1996 White paper on land transport and to put in place a new roadmap that will guide developments over the next 10 to 15 years.

Mr Lim said at the heart of the overhaul is a people-centred land transport system.

‘We will do more to put the commuter at the centre of our land transport system. Our land transport system must be planned and built for people, not vehicles,’ said the Minister.

‘This means seeing through the eyes of the commuter from the time he steps out of his house to the time he gets to his destination. In fact, it starts even before that, as soon as he thinks about making a journey.’

Stressing that the Government will ‘invest in quality, not just system capacity’, Mr Lim said: ‘Simply saying we have planned for enough trains and buses for the increased travel demand in 2020, is not enough.

‘We need to ask: Can people get to a train station or bus stop quickly and comfortably? Are the connections good? How long is total journey time and waiting time between transfers? How crowded are the buses and trains? Can people get timely and user-friendly travel information? And so on.

‘Everything that is important to the commuter needs to be thought through. Only then would we be able to achieve our target of making 70 per cent of all morning peak hour trips on public transport by 2020.’

The Government will focus on three principal strategies to address the problems raised by commuters. They are:

• Making hub-and-spoke system seamless
• Introducing more competition to drive efficiency and service improvements
• Involving our People in the Land Transport System

On improving the hub-and-spoke system, Mr Lim said the government will address the key problems of waiting time, travel time and over-crowding.

He said this is the right model for the public transport system here, and the alternative is to have many direct services, which cannot work in a compact city state like Singapore.

Mr Lim also addressed the central question in the review: What will it take for the majority of Singaporeans to choose the bus or MRT over the car?

As a city state, he said Singapore is the second most densely populated country in the world. Already, roads take up 12 per cent of total land area and the demands on land transport system are set to increase by 60 per cent, from our current 8.9 million daily journeys to 14.3 million by 2020.

‘Making public transport the centrepiece of our land transport system will be crucial, to keep congestion in check and help protect our environment,’ said Mr Lim.

He noted that the common complaints from public transport commuters are: long waits, erratic bus arrivals, circuitous feeders, and overcrowded buses.

They want more point-to-point buses because transfers are inconvenient; the waiting time for each leg adds up, and the total journey time is much too long.

But a 2007 Public Transport Customer Satisfaction Survey showed that commuters were satisfied with the public transport system as a whole. The International Association of Public Transport (UITP) also named Singapore as one of the top cities for public transport in their 2006 ‘Mobility in Cities’ report.

However, LTA’s surveys have also highlighted long waiting times and overcrowding as key concerns.

Mr Lim acknowledged that to make public transport competitive with cars, the system must be better.

He added the review has zeroed in on the problems that commuters have highlighted.

For one, the connectivity of the hub-and-spoke system, in particular the integration between the feeders, trunk buses and the MRT, needs to be improved to ensure seamless transfers and make the whole public transport journey as convenient as possible.

System unity is thus critical, said the Transport Minister. He noted the entire public transport system should be planned and operated as a whole and not as separate parts. ‘The choice for the commuter should not be between bus or rail but between public transport and the car. But this is not the case today,’ he said.

Mr Lim added : ‘Currently, the two public transport operators plan the bus routes within their areas of operation based on commercial considerations, subject to minimum service obligations.

‘This has led to a situation where out of more than 250 bus services, only 35 per cent are run at intervals of 10 minutes or less. Some even run at intervals longer than 30 minutes.

‘Then there are the feeder buses that make huge, circuitous loops before they get to the MRT station or bus interchange.’

Mr Lim said the Government will roll out five major initiatives to enhance the hub and spoke system.

They are:

• LTA to undertake Centralised Bus Planning;
• Distance-based Through Fares to Facilitate Transfers;
• Bus Priority Measures to Speed Up Buses;
• Integrated Public Transport Hubs; and
• Integrated Public Transport Service Information.

‘With all these changes, commuters will have a public transport system where the bus and rail work together in close partnership. Fast and frequent feeders will bring commuters to the high speed trunk routes served by rail or trunk buses. Services will be co-ordinated and easy to understand. Buses will travel speedily on the roads, aided by comprehensive bus priority measures,’ Mr Lim promised.

‘Commuters will make convenient transfers, without any fare penalty, in the comfort of integrated public transport interchanges. Those who wish to can make use of an integrated season pass. They will have easy access to public transport information on the web and on the phone, including real-time information while on the go.’

Article obtained from straitstimes.com on 18th January 2008

The government is going on for the second round of bonus and sweets as part of the GST offset package which helps people cope with the 2% increase in GST. This payout will continue till 2010. If you have not signed up for it, you are encouraged to do so at www.gstoffset.gov.sg or call the CPF Board at 1800-2222-888. While some people have calculated that this offset package will last for quite a fair bit of purchases, the reality is that:

• Some retailers will raise more than 2%
• Some retailers will charge 7% over the current price which already comprised of the 5% tax, making it effectively 8.5%
• There is a waterfall effect where the GST is accumulated

So, it may not really last as long as its thought after all. Nonetheless, better than nothing right?

SINGAPOREANS received about $630 million in Goods and Service Tax (GST) credits and senior citizens’ bonus last year, as part of the $4 billion GST offfset package to help them cope with the 2 per cent GST increase that took effect from last July 1.

More than 2.2 million or almost 97 per cent of the 2.3 million eligible Singaporeans signed up for them by Dec 31, including over 95 per cent of older Singaporeans aged 55 and above, and over 97 per cent of Singaporeans living in one to three-room HDB flats.

Over half (or 41,000) of the 79,000 Singaporeans who did not sign up live in private properties with annual values in excess of $10,000, said a Finance Ministry statement on Friday.

Some have decided not to receive the GST credits and senior citizens’ bonus or have moved away without leaving a valid address or who have passed away.

The ministry said grassroots leaders visited more than 30,000 one to three-room HDB flats from June 2007 to help the elderly and low-income Singaporeans sign up.

Nursing homes and voluntary welfare organisations also conducted special sign up exercises for their residents and clients.

How to receive 2008 credits bonus
All eligible Singaporeans will receive a notification letter in May , informing them of how much they can receive for this year’s payout. The letter will also indicate if the person has already signed up for the credits in 2007.

Singaporeans who had already signed up in 2007 need not do so again in order to receive their 2008-2010 payouts. Those who did not sign up in 2007 will be reminded to do so from mid-May to Dec 31 to receive their credits for 2008-2010.

But there will be no retrospective payment of the 2007 GST Credits and Senior Citizens’ Bonus.

For more information on the GST Offset Package, please visit www.gstoffset.gov.sg or call the CPF Board at 1800-2222-888.

Article obtained from straitstimes.com on 18th January 2008