Dear Clients and Friends

On March 26 the Singapore Government released a second supplementary “Resilience Budget”, providing an additional SGD 48 billion to help households and businesses weather the Covid-19 situation. We’ve summarised below the key measures which may assist our clients across all sizes and sectors suffering in this crisis. This isn’t intended to be comprehensive, but covers those we think most useful for you.

We’ll keep on top of these and provide further update and more specific details. As always, don’t hesitate to contact any of the Stepping Stone team to talk about these matters.

For all companies

1. Jobs Support Scheme (JSS) 

• Government will pay employers 25% of the first SGD 4,600 gross monthly pay of all their local staff (Singaporeans & PRs) – excluding business owners
• More for targeted sectors: 50% for food services, 75% for aviation & tourism businesses
• Covers wages between October 2019 to July 2020; to be paid in stages from end-May
• No need to apply; will be paid directly to the company’s bank account used for IRAS payments

2. Deferring corporate tax payments 

• Any payments due in April-June 2020 to be deferred by 3 months

3. Note that all filings and payments must be made on time for these benefits to apply

For locally-owned companies (with Singaporeans or PRs at least 30% of ultimate beneficial shareholders)

1. Loan funding 

• Particularly the SME Working Capital Loan and Temporary Bridging Loan
• Up to SGD 1m and SGD 5m respectively, provided by banks with government support
• Bridging Loan expanded from tourism sector to all sectors; principal repayments for both can now be deferred for one year
• You apply directly to banks, who can provide quickly: we’ve been through the process and can explain detailed terms

2. Grant funding 

• Enterprise Development Grant (EDG): covers 80% of project spend on eg. consulting fees, IT, internal staff costs in April-December 2020, across a range of activities
• Productivity Solutions Grant (PSG): similar support for digitalisation and productivity upgrading

The full speech and all links (including to household supports) can be found here. 

Stay safe and well – hope to talk soon.

From all the team at Stepping Stone