THIS year's budget deficit is likely to balloon to over $2.4 billion, more than three times larger than initially estimated by the Government.

Higher infrastructure cost, additional spending on procreation measures and lower revenues collected were among the reasons Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam cited.

FOUR statutory boards have invested in credit-linked notes but they are not related to the troubled structured products that have burnt many retail investors here.

Those investments have suffered paper losses of about 14 per cent over the past year - relatively modest given the big slides in global stock markets.

TOKYO/LONDON - MAJOR world banks showed the unrelenting strain of economic crisis on Tuesday, with Britain's Barclays offering funds to quell shareholder anger and profits in Japan's largest bank tumbling 64 per cent.

Japan's economy minister said recession in the world's second-biggest economy could last longer than feared and falling UK inflation, and the prospect of the same in the United States, paved the way for further interest rate cuts.

FROM January, more than 200,000 workers will be added to the list of people covered by the Employment Act, updated for the first time in 13 years.

The changes, proposed in September, are to keep pace with a changing labour market with rising salaries and more white-collar workers, said Acting Manpower Minister Gan Kim Yong .