Maintenance: The Civil List
The Parliament of Singapore is required to provide a civil list for the maintenance of the President, and it does so by way of the Civil List and Pension Act. For the current fiscal year, the sum under Class I of the list, which includes the President's personal pay ($4,267,500, known by the British term the "privy purse"), an entertainment allowance ($73,000) and an allowance for an Acting President ($4,500), is $4,279,300. The salaries for the President's personal staff (Class II) amount to $4,532,400. Speaking in Parliament on 10 March 2011, the Minister for Finance Tharman Shanmugaratnam explained that the increases in these sums were to cater for the salaries of an additional staff officer to support the work of the Council of Presidential Advisers, and a butler manager; and to meet higher variable staff salary payments due to the nation's strong economic growth. The allowance for the Istana's household expenses (Class III) is $2,068,300. In addition to being used for ceremonies and celebrations, this allowance is used to cover the maintenance of the Istana, vehicles, utilities and other supplies. Class IV expenses for "special services" are $659,300. In previous years, this sum was used to cover various expenses such as the cost of replacing state cars and installing a new document repository. Overall, the current civil list of $11,605,000 represents an increase of about 12% from the sum for the past fiscal year of $10,354,700.
For the next financial year, the civil list will remain at $11.6 million. However, Class I expenses will be reduced to $3,782,000 due to lower anticipated variable payments, Class II expenses will rise slightly to $4,537,100, Class III expenses will increase by $610,100 to $2,678,400 to cover the cost of a presidential swearing-in ceremony, and Class IV expenses will fall to $607,500.
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