IT is "certainly premature" to discuss curbs to rein in the buoyant housing market at this juncture, said Singapore Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat on Wednesday.

However, he cautioned that the low interest-rate environment could bring risks to such big-ticket financial commitments, and the government therefore needs to watch the market.

Speaking at an interview with Bloomberg News, Mr Heng declined to reveal the "threshold" or level of property price appreciation that could　trigger additional cooling measures, but said the government is "looking at all these developments all the time".

Private home prices in the city-state　rose 2.2 per cent in 2020, a tad slower than the 2.7 per cent increase in 2019, although the quarterly price growth accelerated from 0.3 per cent in Q2 to 2.1 per cent in Q4 last year. The uptrend also came despite the economy falling into recession.

Following the Asian financial crisis and the global financial crisis, the government has developed a risk dashboard for the overall Singapore economy, and different agencies are monitoring different aspects of this dashboard, Mr Heng noted on Wednesday.

"So if there is a need for us to move pre-emptively, we will," he added.

Interest rates today are ultra low and even negative in some cases, which can lead to "significant mispricing" of assets and "a significant risk of investing in the wrong places", said Mr Heng, who is also the finance minister.

Given that many individuals in Singapore put a large portion of their life savings into property purchases, the government needs to ensure the housing market remains "sustainable", he told Bloomberg.

His comments followed intense speculation within the industry that new cooling measures might be coming this year, with the suggestions ranging from a　further tightening of borrowing limits　and higher stamp duties to setting a minimum size for each condominium unit and　regulating agents' commissions.

In January 2021,　sales volumes of new private homes　surged to 1,609 units, up 32 per cent over December 2020, as talk of potential curbs seemed to have the opposite effect of spurring buyers into action.

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