Budget 2019 was not an easy one to deliver. Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat presented it in an environment that was not the most congenial to the Government.

First, it came in the wake of a series of incidents that has raised the political temperature - the HIV and SingHealth data breaches and the national service training deaths, to name a few. Just over the weekend, another lapse came to light: 7,700 people received the wrong amount of healthcare subsidies due to an IT glitch.