Thursday, September 28, 2006
[RealEdge] BT : S'pore govt land sales fetch a bumper $5.8b
| Published September 28, 2006  | |||
| S'pore govt land sales fetch a bumper $5.8b Sales to private sector account for $3.67b
By KALPANA RASHIWALA
(SINGAPORE) The government collected $5.8 billion from selling state land in the year ended March 2006 - more than double its $1.96 billion take the year before. The Singapore Land Authority (SLA) - custodian of all state land and properties - revealed this in its latest annual report. The bulk of the latest year's bumper takings came from selling land to the private sector for a total of $3.67 billion, it said. Examples include the sale of the Business and Financial Centre site and the landmark Orchard Turn plot. In addition, land sales to statutory boards, including Sentosa Development Corporation, Housing & Development Board, JTC Corp and PUB Corp, totalled $2.18 billion. SLA does not retain the money it collects on the government's behalf by selling state land. But SLA does get to collect agency fees for some sales. Basically, it is paid agency fees for land it sells directly to the private sector or other government bodies. However, it gets no fee if another statutory board - for instance, the Urban Redevelopment Authority or the Housing & Development Board - is appointed to market and sell state sites. SLA's latest annual report shows that agency fees increased slightly from $50.2 million to $50.8 million, partly because of higher fees from land sales. But other fees and charges dipped from $32.6 million to about $30 million, mainly due to lower takings from survey inspection services. As a result, SLA's total income fell from $82.8 million to $80.8 million, which eroded its net surplus from $13 million to $9.8 million. Other factors behind the lower bottom line were higher spending relating to agency functions and a slight increase in manpower costs. The latter went up from $30.6 million to $31.1 million, due partly to higher medical subsidies, long service awards and staff welfare. There was also termination compensation of almost $500,000 as SLA outsourced some IT functions, such as management of scanned and microfilmed records. SLA also reported a record volume of transactions for the year just ended for its Integrated Land Information Service (Inlis) which provides online searches on property ownership and information.
|
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch format to Traditional
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe
__,_._,___
