A bond is an investment vehicle in which you loan your money to a government or corporation for a certain time. In return they will give you either a fixed or floating amount of interest. If you are interested in purchasing Singaporean government or corporate bonds, then you will need to open an account with a local investment firm. There are several types of bonds you can choose from with different time frames and yields.
Look at the government bonds available. There are two types of government bonds you can choose from. For the government bonds there are two types the treasury bills that mature at 3 or 6 months and the treasury bonds that mature after 2, 5, 7, 10 or 15 years. These are fixed rate bonds and usually pay about 1.5 percent per year.
Look at the corporate bonds available. There are four main issuers of corporate bonds in Singapore. These are the Land Transportation Authority, (LTA), the Housing Development Board (HDB), Temasek Holdings, and the Jurong Town Corporation (JTC). Bond lengths are anywhere from 1 to 20 years and have a minimum investment requirement of 10,000 Singapore dollars. The yield on these bonds varies. Some have a fixed interest rate and some are variable. It ranges between 1 percent to 3 percent per year.
Purchase your bonds online. Open an account with fundsupermart.com or poems.com.sg. Anybody can apply for one of these accounts and there are no limits based on nationality. There is a minimum investment of 5,000 Singapore dollars with POEMS (Phillips Online Electronic Mart System). With FundSuperMart it is 10,000 Singapore dollars. If you are Singaporean or a Singaporean permanent resident, then you can use the pension savings in the central provident fund to pay for the purchase, rather than using your own cash. If you are a foreigner then you will need to provide all of your own funds.
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Writer Bio
Palmer Owyoung holds a Master of Arts in international business from the University of California at San Diego and a Bachelor of Arts in sociology from the University of California at Santa Barbara and is a trained molecular biologist. He has been a freelance writer since 2006. In addition to writing, he is a full-time Forex trader and Internet marketer.