Just like how singapore's budget is easily in deficit because they intentionally leave out items:
http://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/ecstabey/Tilak JAE3.pdf
Two major items are excluded from the budget. One is receipt from the sale of land and
other capital goods. The volatile nature of these receipts is the reason for not considering them as a regular revenue
component. The other item is the net investment income (NII)3 generated by investing government reserves. As a
constitutional requirement, only up to 50% of the NII can be included in current revenues and the rest has to be
protected as past reserves.
So similarly it's easy for HDB to do all kinds of accounting tricks to hide as well.
Housing prices increased by 100% in 2 years.
HDB making record losses on that?
If Singaporeans believe it, they can believe ANYTHING!
And it gets worse...
Once all the capital receipts go into the reserves, they can be transferred out to GLCs...i.e. Temasek, GIC , as our constitution was amended to allow this hurriedly and without any parliamentary discussion recently.
And everyone knows how Temasek, GIC are doing.
So without any transparency and information disclosure, who knows what is REALLY GOING ON?