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Singapore Statutory Boards
The eighty-three statutory boards were a distinctive
feature of
Singapore's government. In law, a statutory board was an
autonomous
government agency established by an act of Parliament that
specified the purpose, rights, and powers of the body. It
was
separate from the formal government structure, not staffed
by civil
servants, and it did not enjoy the legal privileges and
immunities
of government departments. It had much greater autonomy
and
flexibility in its operations than regular government
departments.
Its activities were overseen by a cabinet minister who
represented
Parliament to the board and the board to Parliament.
Statutory
boards were managed by a board of directors, whose members
typically included senior civil servants, businessmen,
professionals, and trade union officials. The chairman of
the board
of directors, who was often a member of Parliament, a
senior civil
servant, or a person distinguished in some relevant field,
was
appointed by the cabinet minister who had jurisdiction
over the
board. The employees of the board were not civil servants,
as they
were not appointed by the Public Service Commission. The
salary
scales and terms of service of employees differed from
board to
board. Statutory boards did not receive regular
allocations of
funds from the public treasury, but were usually expected
to
generate their own funds from their activities. Surplus
funds were
invested or used as development capital, and boards could
borrow
funds from the government or such bodies as the
World Bank (see Glossary). Statutory boards included the Housing and
Development
Board, the Central Provident Fund, the Port of Singapore
Authority,
the Industrial Training Board, the Family Planning and
Population
Board, and the Singapore Muslim Religious Council (Majlis
Ugama
Islam Singapura).
The statutory boards played the major role in the
government's
postindependence development strategy, and their
activities usually
served multiple economic and political goals. The Housing
and
Development Board (HDB) provided a good example. The HDB
was
established by the first People's Action Party (PAP)
government on
February 1, 1960, to provide low-cost public housing. The
Lands
Acquisition Act of 1966 granted the board the power of
compulsory
purchase of any private land required for housing
development. The
prices paid by the board were about 20 percent of the
estimated
market value of the land, which was in fact if not in form
being
nationalized. Between 1960 and 1979, the percentage of
land owned
by the government rose from 44 to 67 percent, increasing
the
government's control over that scarce resource and
benefiting lowincome voters, who supported the PAP, at the expense of
the much
smaller number of private landowners. Rents for Housing
and
Development Board apartments were subsidized, and selling
prices
for the apartments were set below construction costs and
did not
include land acquisition costs. Purchase prices for board
apartments in the 1980s were 50 to 70 percent below those
of
privately owned apartments. By 1988 Housing and
Development Board
apartment complexes were home to 86 percent of the
population, and
construction of new apartments continued.
The HDB succeeded in its primary goal of building large
numbers
of high-quality apartments. Its success depended on
several
factors, among them: access to large amounts of government
capital;
sweeping powers of land acquisition; the ability to train
its own
construction workers and engineers; the freedom to act as
a
building corporation and develop its own quarries and
brick
factory; the opportunity to enter into partnerships and
contracts
with suppliers of construction materials; and the ability
to
prevent corruption in contracting and allocation of
apartments to
the public. The government raised the capital for housing
construction from the Central Provident Fund, a compulsory
savings
plan into which all Singapore workers contributed up to 25
percent
of their monthly incomes, and from low-interest, long-term
loans
from such international development agencies as the World
Bank.
By providing adequate housing at low cost to low-paid
workers
in the 1960s, the PAP delivered a highly visible and
concrete
political reward to the electorate and laid the
foundations for its
unbroken electoral success. In the 1960s and early 1970s,
before
the growth of export-oriented industry, housing
construction
provided much employment and an opportunity for workers to
learn
new skills. By controlling the pace and scale of housing
construction, the government was able to better regulate
the
economy and smooth out cycles of economic activity. The
result of
rehousing practically the entire population was to make
the
government either the landlord or the mortgage holder for
most
families and so bring them into closer contact with the
state. The
government used resettlement to break up the ethnic
enclaves and
communities that had characterized colonial Singapore. It
put its
policy of multiracialism into practice by seeing that all
apartment
buildings contained members of all ethnic groups in
numbers that
reflected their proportion of the national population
(see Population Distribution and Housing Policies
, ch. 2). The
program
kept the cost of housing in Singapore relatively low and
helped to
avert pressure to raise wages. Because access to
subsidized housing
was a benefit extended only to citizens, it served to
promote
identification with the new state. Providing most of the
population
with low-cost housing gave the government and ruling party
much
favorable publicity, won public support, and was used as
evidence
for the correctness of the government's policies of
centralized
planning and social engineering implemented by experts on
behalf of
a passive public.
In a similar fashion, the Central Provident Fund
(see Patterns of Development
, ch. 3) benefited the citizens by providing
them
with secure savings for their old age and the satisfaction
of
having their own account, which could be used as security
for the
purchase of a Housing and Development Board apartment, for
such
expenses as medical bills, for college tuition, or to
finance a
pilgrimage to Mecca. The government benefited by gaining
control of
a very large pool of capital that it could invest or spend
as it
would and by removing enough purchasing power to limit
inflationary
tendencies. Furthermore, the proportion of the wage
contributed to
the fund by both workers and their employers could be
adjusted at
any time, enhancing the government's ability to control
the
economy. In 1988 the Fund took 35 percent of all wages up
to
S$6,000 per month; 25 percent was paid by the worker and
10 percent
by the employer. Among its other functions, the Central
Provident
Fund was one of the major instruments used by the
government to
control wages.
Data as of December 1989
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