Singapore plans biggest budget deficit in more than two decades

(Feb 19): Singapore will post its biggest budget deficit since at least 1997, pledging S$6.4 billion in dedicated support for an economy being slammed by the coronavirus outbreak.

The deficit will widen to 2.1% of gross domestic product in the year through March 2021 from a projected 0.3% in the current fiscal year, Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat said Tuesday in Parliament. The median in a Bloomberg survey of economists was for a fiscal 2020 shortfall of 1.5% of GDP.