Patient care not compromised despite $310 million operating expenditure dip: MOH
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In estimating its budget for the next financial year, the Ministry of Health has reduced its estimated operating expenditure for FY2025 to $18.49 billion.
ST PHOTO: KUA CHEE SIONG
SINGAPORE - Despite a downward adjustment of the Health Ministry’s operating expenditure in the 2025 financial year by $310 million, compared with earlier projections, the ministry’s expenditure will maintain its upward trajectory in coming years.
The lower-than-expected expenditure had not impacted or compromised patient care, said Minister of State for Health Rahayu Mahzam in Parliament on March 4, in response to queries from Mr Gerald Giam (Aljunied GRC).
She added that the reduction is mainly due to lower-than-expected increases in operating costs at the public healthcare clusters.
Mr Giam had asked what led to the reduction in estimates, considering there should be an increase in expenditure with increased care demands of a rapidly ageing population.
In estimating its budget for the next financial year (FY), the Ministry of Health (MOH) has reduced its estimated operating expenditure for FY2025 to $18.49 billion. This is $310 million lower than the earlier estimated expenditure of $18.80 billion.
The 1.6 per cent reduction is within an accepted margin of budget variance, Ms Rahayu added.
Despite this reduction, she said that the ministry’s operating expenditure maintains an upward trajectory, with the revised estimate being $1.63 billion (9.7 per cent) higher than the actual operating expenditure in FY2024.
“The trend of increase will continue, as shown by the estimated FY2026 operating expenditure of $20.04 billion,” said Ms Rahayu.
Mr Giam asked for greater clarity on the lower-than-expected costs and whether the reasons included lower take-up rate of salary enhancement schemes, or other reasons which could have led to longer waiting times, and if these had caused any compromise in patient care.
Ms Rahayu said that as some information pertains to operations, this is not publicly available, and reiterated that the adjustment was a result of changes in expenditure estimates of different projects, as well as different decisions made on certain items.
She said that “it was not an issue of compromising of care to patients... healthcare services continue to be (of) priority, and continue to be delivered well to the patients”.
