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04 Jul 2018  (193 Views) 
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Ministry of Trade & Industry


Tariffs and GST

Most people say that tariffs are bad. They increase cost for the consumers.

I agree. It does increase cost for consumers. So does GST.

I prefer tariff to GST. The government can decide on which items to impose a tariff to help to protect manufacturing jobs.

I am talking about big countries, not Singapore. Singapore is too small to matter.

In the case of Singapore, we need protection for our jobs. We cannot allow the free entry of foreign workers.

Actually, we are already imposing a "tariff" on foreign workers. The employer has to pay a levy for each foreign worker.

There is no tariff for the higher level of foreign workers that come in through an E Pass. This is a bad policy that needs to be changed. We should require the employer to pay a levy on E Pass holders as well.

I welcome the return to a system of tariffs. Apart from protecting jobs of their citizens, they also provide revenue to the government.

The government does need revenue to run the country and provide the social services that are needed by the people, such as education, health care, security, etc.

I find GST to be the worst kind of revenue for a government. It is imposed on every item that is purchased. The administrative cost is horrendous. The retailer also marks up the prices to have a margin to cover their administrative cost and to increase their profit margin.

Under a system of tariffs, the workers will be able to enjoy better wages. This will lead to a reduction of inequality that has plagued many countries around the world.

With tariffs, the flow of trade will reduce. However, the reduction will be small. There will still be a lot of trade as some countries are more efficient in producing certain products than other countries.

As Singapore has a large logistic base, it will be affected. However, there will still be trade around the world, so the impact is not serious. We can adjust.

Furthermore, the government does not need to impose tariffs on every item. They on need to impose the tariffs to get the tax revenue and also to protect certain local jobs.

Tan Kin Lian


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