Singapore public housing block owners rent their apartments to expatriates, mostly Indians, Malaysians and Chinese working in Singapore. Last month the apartments were reportedly fetching up to S$2,900 a month, about the same as privately-built apartments. Demand for the Housing Development Board, or HDB apartments, is expected to escalate with the influx of more foreign workers for the building of the casino and the Singapore Grande Prix

Singapore, Sunday 8 June 2008: There's New York, the city that never sleeps, Paris, the city of light, Rome, the eternal city, and in 2017 there will be Singapore, the city of millionaires, forecast Britain’s Barclays Bank.

And the bank's wealth-management unit should know.

The unit made a survey of Singapore last year and reckons that there will be more wealthy households in the city-state in nine years time than in Hong Kong or Switzerland.

The unit predicts Singapore will have 436,000 households with assets such as cash, shares, bonds and property worth US$1.6 trillion between them by 2017.

It means that 43 percent of Singapore’s population of more than four and a half million will be millionaires by 2017.

But what of the 57 percent non-millionaires?

The response posted on the Singapore Democracy website to the 2007 wealth survey provides a clue.

“I really wonder where they get all this BullCrap from” writes CJ.

Even if it’s true that 43 percent of Singaporeans will be millionaires in nine years time, the cost of living will be so high that the rich will migrate to countries, “with more space to breathe and live in,” the writer predicts.

Mike Chan argues that the wealth-management unit’s survey’s forecast was not sufficiently thorough. He wants it to estimate what the remaining 57 percent of Singapore households will be worth.

Why do thousands in Singapore queue daily for free food and why do some end their poverty stricken lives in front of our MRT trains? he asks.

“Never forget history,” he warns.

This includes the cause of the French revolution, the downfall of Marcos and Soeharto and “even real-time in nearby Malaysia.”

See Beng asks who benefits from the economic growth that Barclays wealth-management unit says has shifted East?

The writer complains that economic growth elsewhere benefits a country’s citizens but in Singapore the ruling Peoples Action Party's or PAP growth strategy helps foreigners become rich by providing cheap imported labour.

“Singaporeans, especially our elders are competing with foreigners to earn $400 a month as cleaners,'' the writer says.

The Peoples Action Party, or PAP, led by Lee Kuan Yew is prostituting Singapore to foreigners, he says.

Gary Teoh writes that Singaporeans are second-class citizens who work “like a pariah” to pay debts and loans for 20 to 30 years while imported foreign workers are treated as first class citizens who use Singapore as a stepping stone.

“Foreign workers use our tax payer’s money,” he says.

Barclays wealth-management unit says that the price of housing in Singapore has risen 58 percent in the last four years making Singapore's the world’s fastest growing residential property market.

The unit forecasts that Singapore's real-estate prices will continue to rise during the next ten years and that it will increase the number of Singapore millionaires.

But assett riches will not necessarily provide Housing Development Board, or HBD, householders with three meals a day, writes Singa Crew who says the Peoples Action Party or PAP will have to do no more than artificially inflate the price of public housing to make the 57 percent non-millionaires millionaires.

“They just have to rig the prices of a Housing Development Board, or HBD flat to the million dollar mark and half the population will end “millionaires,” the writer says.

Twenty to 30 years to pay off the Housing Development Board or HDB flat if the purchaser lives on a million dollar property.

It doesn't matter if thousands of people jump off their million dollar flats because they can't keep up with payments and face the prospect of being homeless.

“Dead or alive, they are still “millionaires” and included in the Barclays survey'', says Singa Crew.

The wealth-management unit survey doesn't identify the potential new millionaires but Mr Tan believes “the new rich will be new migrants from just about everywhere in the world including Indonesians rather than true Singaporeans.

“Just look at the Singapore sporting scene, how many of them are true blue Singaporeans?,” he asks.

Sinister Minister believes that Barclays has underestimated the number of millionaires Singapore will host by 2017.

The future will see 30 Singaporeans packed into a HDB flat just like the 30 Chinese factory workers who were found doing so a few months ago, Sinister Minister forecasts.

All Singaporeans need to do is starve themeselves and lose weight, says Sinister Minister.

This is easily done becasue Singapore's food prices are high, he says.

Sinister Minister is adamant that 30 Singaporeans will fit into a Housing Development Board or HDB flat.

The writer estimates that 30 Singaporeans plus a Housing Development Board or HDB flat equals a household of a million plus in assets.

“Swiss standards indeed,” says the writer.

The Southeast Asian Times