With Singapore's gross domestic product growth having come in at 7.2 per cent last year - slightly above the official forecast of around 7 per cent, some economists have turned more optimistic about the prospects for 2022, with some even raising their forecasts for the year above the upper end of the Government's projection of 3 per cent to 5 per cent. While indeed the economy has shown resilience, its stellar growth last year - the highest since 2010 - came off an unusually low base of a 5.4 per cent contraction in 2020.

Moreover, there were extraordinary policy measures that helped the economy to bounce back. One was the unprecedented and broad-based fiscal boost from the Government over multiple Budgets during the last two years, which protected jobs and supported companies. Huge fiscal expansions in major economies, coupled with near-zero interest rates, also kept global demand more buoyant than it would otherwise have been.