Good corporate profits, strong wage growth and a rip-roaring property market are likely to mean that public revenues exceeded expenditures by between $4 billion and $5 billion, say economists.

This would give the Government considerable leeway to be extra generous with one-off financial aid measures to help the elderly and poor cope with escalating living costs, the experts said.

'It's going to surprise on the upside,' said DBS Bank economist Irvin Seah, who is expecting an overall surplus of $4.28 billion for the fiscal year ending March 31.

'Due to strong economic growth, tax collections will be higher than expected.'

Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam will be presenting the Budget to Parliament on Friday. The expected bumper surplus follows economic growth last year, likely to come in at 7.5 per cent.

The final figures for gross domestic product, or economic output, for last year will be announced tomorrow and are expected to reflect estimates published last month.

The Government has recorded, at best, a small surplus in recent years. The last time it achieved a bulging surplus was in 2000 at $4 billion and in 1999 at $4.9 billion.

Standard Chartered Bank (Stanchart) economist Alvin Liew noted that when a fiscal deficit of $690,000 was estimated a year ago, the Government was forecasting growth at 4 per cent to 6 per cent.

Read the full story in Wednesday's edition of The Straits Times.