Car Tax Bill Now Bigger Than Fiji
Singapore business, finance and trade news, every Monday.
Chips Pick Up America's Slack
Non-oil domestic exports climbed 9.3% in January, falling short of the 12.5% forecast, as integrated circuits jumped 80.5% on AI demand and a weak base year. Electronics rose 56.1% while non-electronics slipped 3%, dragged by specialised machinery and petrochemicals. The headline number masks a sharp geographic shift: exports to the US collapsed 45.3%, deepening December's 36.3% slide, while the EU reversed course with 43.7% growth after contracting 5.4% the month before. Thailand swung to 39.3% growth. Two of the top 10 markets contracted; the other eight posted gains, suggesting the trade flows are rebalancing faster than the top-line figure lets on.
Read more: Business Times, Trading View
Lawyering Up for the AI Age
Prime Minister Lawrence Wong announced in his 2026 Budget speech on Feb 12 that white-collar professionals will get AI training through an expanded TechSkills Accelerator programme, starting with lawyers and accountants before rolling out to other fields. Wong will chair a new National AI Council overseeing four "AI missions" targeting advanced manufacturing, connectivity, finance and healthcare. The choice of lawyers and accountants as guinea pigs isn't random: both professions are drowning in text-heavy work where AI already excels at document review, case summaries and compliance checks, while facing chronic talent shortages in accounting and high attrition in law. The open question: whether training accountants to prompt-craft solves manpower crunches or just automates their junior staff.
Read more: CNA, Business Times
Vouchers Forever
The 2026 budget is going to hand every household S$500 in CDC vouchers plus S$200 to S$400 cash payments, despite 5% GDP growth in 2025 and median household incomes jumping 6.8% in real terms. The handouts started in June 2020 as pandemic relief for lower-income families, were expanded to all households in 2021 starting at S$100, and ballooned to S$800 per household by 2025. Nearly 89% of voucher spending goes to food and daily essentials at more than 24,000 participating merchants, up from about 10,000 when the scheme launched. What began as emergency relief at S$100 a pop now lands at S$500 in a boom year, and shows no sign of sunsetting.
Read more: CNA
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Gold Bars Sold Out, Appointments Only
Good luck walking into a UOB branch for gold this Friday , the bank is turning away walk-ins and requiring appointments. UOB's physical gold sales jumped 60% in 2025, and most of its bullion is now gone: 20 of 27 gold bar types are sold out, with all coins depleted. Gold crossed S$5,500 per ounce in late January before settling around S$5,022, up roughly 70% year-on-year, as a weakening dollar and geopolitical jitters sent retail investors scrambling for physical metal. A 1kg bar at UOB now costs S$206,115. The bank's paper gold accounts also saw demand rise 48%, but clearly nothing satisfies quite like holding the real thing when currencies start looking shaky.
Read more: Business Times
The Scammers Got AI Too
Interpol's cybercrime center in Singapore has its hands full with criminal syndicates that now wield the same AI tools as legitimate businesses. Director Neal Jetton, seconded from the US Secret Service, calls the weaponization of AI by cybercriminals "the biggest threat we're seeing," and says the "sheer volume" of attacks keeps rising. Criminals are buying ready-made hacking kits on the Dark Web and using AI to generate flawless phishing emails and deepfake videos of government officials endorsing scam investments. Anyone with a smartphone qualifies as a target.
Read more: Straits Times
BYD Sends Toyota to the Back Seat
BYD just parked itself at the top of the auto market for the first time, moving 11,184 vehicles in 2025 for a 21.2% market share after an 80.6% year-on-year jump. Toyota, king of the hill for years, slipped to second with 7,466 units including Lexus, a 5.2% drop. The government's S$40,000 EV tax break helped push pure electric vehicles to 45.1% of new registrations, and BYD's Atto 3 hoovered up cost-conscious buyers facing astronomical vehicle registration fees.
Read more: Starnewskorea
Car Tax Bill Now Bigger Than Fiji
Owning a car here now generates more revenue than an entire country. The government pulled in S$11.05 billion from vehicle quota premiums and car taxes in the fiscal year ending March 2026, overshooting its own projection by 31% and comfortably eclipsing Fiji's GDP. Quota premiums alone accounted for S$8.66 billion, well above what officials estimated a year ago, as the cost of keeping a car in the city-state hit record highs. Singapore sets strict quotas on new vehicle registrations through a bidding system, and premiums have climbed as supply stays tight and demand refuses to budge. For scale, Fiji's 2025 GDP comes in around S$10.8 billion, meaning a single administrative revenue line from a city of six million now outpaces the total economic output of a Pacific island nation, hotels, sugar, and all.
Read more: Bloomberg
Home Turf Still Holds Half the Chips
More than half of Temasek's S$434 billion portfolio never leaves the city-state. The sovereign wealth fund's local bets include the usual suspects: DBS, which just delivered a 38% dividend bump despite net profit dipping 3% on global minimum tax implementation; Singtel; and ST Engineering. The 20-year total shareholder return lands at 7%, decent but hardly barn-burning for a fund with 13 offices across nine countries. For all the talk of global diversification, 52% of the portfolio remains within the city-state's borders.
Read more: Yahoo Finance SG
Mickey Mouse Drops Anchor
Disney Cruise Line is parking its largest ship in Singapore starting April 30, betting that Southeast Asian families will happily spend four nights at sea with zero port stops. The Disney Adventure begins year-round sailings from Marina Bay Cruise Centre, with inside cabins going for $1,002 per person and concierge suites hitting $6,974. It's the first Disney ship homeported outside the United States.
Read more: Travel and Tour World
Red Dot Still Outranks Uncle Sam
The red passport keeps its grip on the top spot in the 2026 Henley Passport Index with visa-free access to 192 destinations; the US sits tenth with 179. Taiwan climbed to 32nd with 135 destinations, while China languishes at 56th, tied with Botswana. Thailand held at 58th with 70 destinations.
Read more: Visiontimes
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