Temasek's employees cost an average of 52million EACH

[propertyinvestor]

Are you calling a professor an idiot?

Of course! What is more important in the democratic market place of ideas? Reputation or the idea itself?

So do you also believe what Ho Ching says that Temasek has achieved annualised returns of 17% annually?

[yeokiwi]

Are you calling a professor an idiot?

Of course! What is more important in the democratic market place of ideas? Reputation or the idea itself?

So do you also believe what Ho Ching says that Temasek has achieved annualised returns of 17% annually?

Misinterpretations and possible frauds are two different matters.

It is just like you are eating at Geylang and I assume you are a pimp, that's misinterpretation based on my observation.
However, you claim that you are a honest property investor. I may doubt it (since you are at geylang) but unless I have further evidence, I will have to believe that you are what you said.

Here, we are not debating whether Temasek's account is proper a not. We are only pointing out that Balding is simply misinterpreting the data.

[HitandRun]

So do you also believe what Ho Ching says that Temasek has achieved annualised returns of 17% annually?

That is an interesting question. I might have read about it but it didn't really register in my memory.

Let's examine the data. Based on the data that I trawled from the internet, Singapore's GDP in 1974 was around 7.7Bn. Last year, it was around 330Bn. Whether these figures are nominal (what we need) or adjusted for inflation, I am not sure but I don't think it will matter to our conclusion.

If we annualised it, the growth rate of Singapore's nominal economy is around 11% from 1974 to 2011. But we must also remember that companies like SIA, PSA, ST Engineering, Singapore Power, etc are monopolies or used to be monopolies. Therefore, it won't be surprising if they grow in excess of 11%.

The other point to note is that whether there is a survivorship bias introduced by only looking at Temasek's portfolio now. If so, companies like micropolis would definitely not be measured. The important question would be how are additions and subtractions measured to arrive at the 17%. We cannot tell unless we are allowed to examine the data.

And a more important question to Singaporeans could be: What will be TH's return in the coming years?

[godjira1]

I am pretty sure Dr Christopher Balding is not an idiot

A smart guy make a ridiculous conclusion base on obviously flaw data. The only reason is he did it with a hidden agenda

This is the cynical view but i agree is the right one in this case. Obviously a sensational untruth here.

And one thing about investments (maybe not so bad in VB) is that you do lose money in some of them. Im not a big fan of hc, have/had friends in TH and its a bit bureaucratic, but to expect no losses on a basket of investments is madness.

[propertyinvestor]

“Factually” Incorrect: The IMF Restatement
Posted on October 10, 2012
It has been brought to my attention that the Singapore government has created website called Factually where they “present the facts.” On this website they address such issues as “why did the IMF restate Singapore’s fiscal data?” and “Is there something wrong with our Reserves?” In these “factual” articles by the Singaporean government they complain about “recent online articles” questioning the veracity and reliability of Singaporean data. As I have had people, both those criticizing and encouraging me, to respond, I will respond to the Singaporean governments response.

I will begin with their short response to the IMF restatement of Singaporean public finance data. There are two primary points about the Singaporean response. First, it says nothing. All of the information put forward in their response could have been written by someone with no knowledge of Singaporean public finances who did nothing more than read my original blog post. Here are some side by side comparisons:

1a. The IMF increased the size of the Singaporean government surplus from $271 billion SGD to $429 billion SGD between 1990 and 2011.

1b. The restatement increased the figure for the cumulative government surplus for the period 1990-2011 from $271bn as reported in the WEO database in September 2011 to $429bn in April 2012.

2a. The IMF initially responded by saying the re-restatement in August of 2012 was to “address some technical issues” with the original restatement.

2b. The restatement of data in the WEO database was due to technical errors in the course of an IMF data migration exercise.

3a. The difference between the original value of $271 billion SGD and the re-restated value of $267 billion SGD is slightly more than $4 billion SGD.

3b. The IMF corrected the errors in August 2012 when it reported a cumulated government surplus of $267bn for the period.

Without looking, can you tell which is which? In short, there is virtually no information contained in their response that was not contained in my original post. There is no response other than to restate what I stated in my blog. That is not much of a response but I am impressed that the Singapore government will use what I have written.

Second, the Singaporean governments response is completely wrong on the most important factual point about the restatement. The Singaporean government writes that they had been accused of “under-reporting our government revenues and surpluses.” This is a flat out lie.

I write about the restatement that “most interestingly, the increase in the surplus came not from an increase in revenue but rather a decrease in government expenditure.” I specifically say that the IMF data increasing the surplus did not come from a change in revenue. In other words, the Singaporean government is accusing me of saying things that I emphasize are not true.

The Singaporean government does not respond to what I say so much as say the same thing that I say except for the section where they purposefully accuse me of saying something where I clearly said the opposite. It is therefore very difficult to see how the Singaporean government actually disagrees with me here or where they take issue with what I said.

The last point is that at no point in the post about the fiscal restatement does Singapore dispute what I say is the most important point: with or without the restatement there remain “remain enormous discrepancies in Singaporean public finances.” With or without the IMF restatement, there remain large discrepancies in Singapore data and they are not addressed.

In summation, the Singapore government merely restates what I said and lies about the primary fact in question. Hopefully, they will become more truthful about data and their statements about it.