SINGAPORE, July 24 — Monetary Authority of Singapore said it’s too early for the city-state to ease property measures that is helping curb surging residential prices.

“Property prices, they remain at elevated levels, although they’ve just started to soften,” Ravi Menon, managing director of the MAS, as the central bank is known, at the release of its 2013/14 annual report today. “It’s very important that we secure the gains that we’ve made in stabilising the market and restoring financial prudence.”

Debt levels among highly-leveraged households remain high, Menon said. The MAS has narrowed its 2014 inflation forecast to between 1.5 per cent and 2 per cent from 1.5 per cent to 2.5 per cent as the property curbs helped stabilise prices and rents, Menon said.

Residential values in the city-state slid for a third quarter in the three months to June to post the longest losing streak in five years after the government introduced loan measures last June, widening a campaign that began in 2009 to curb speculation.

Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam, who’s also chairman of the central bank, said on July 4 that a further correction in the Singapore property market would not be unexpected.

Further declines

Home prices in Singapore will probably extend declines as the government sticks with curbs, according to Keppel Land Ltd., signalling further losses for Asia’s second-most expensive housing market.

“Home prices are expected to continue to moderate,” Chief Executive Officer Ang Wee Gee said at a results briefing yesterday. “Singapore is unlikely to relax property-cooling measures in the short term.”

The index tracking 49 property companies in the island- state declined 0.3 per cent in Singapore trading as of 12:13 p.m. local time, the first drop in eight days.

“I don’t see the government relaxing the curbs for a year,” said Nicholas Mak, an executive director at SLP International Property Consultants in Singapore. “Developers that have deep pockets may not be under tremendous pressure to cut prices.” — Bloomberg