On 18 February 2020, in response to the economic impact brought about by COVID-19, the Minister for Finance has unveiled during Budget 2020, a S$4 billion Stabilization and Support Package (as part of the Unity Budget) that contains a range of measures to cushion the pandemic’s impact on local businesses and workers. Details of the Stabilization and Support package shared during Budget 2020 can be found here.
As both the global economy and COVID-19 outbreak continued to worsen, the Government announced a second stimulus package (known as the Resilience Budget) on 26 March 2020. The Resilience Budget, worth a generous S$48.4 billion, aims to support households, help workers stay employed, and provide support for businesses to emerge stronger when the economy recovers. One of the key tax measures included in the Resilience Budget relates to the automatic deferment of income tax payment for companies. Apart from broad-based support for the entire economy, the Resilience Budget also introduced measures to help specific sectors that are directly impacted by the COVID-19 outbreak such as the Aviation, Tourism, Food Services, Land Transport and Arts & Culture sectors. Details of the Resilience Budget can be found here.
With the “circuit breaker” taking effect from 7 April 2020, the Government announced on 6 April 2020 a S$5.1 billion Solidarity Budget, targeted at cushioning the impact of the month-long “circuit breaker” on the local workforce livelihoods of our workers. Details of the Solidarity Budget can be found here.
And with the “circuit breaker” extended to 1 June 2020, the Government has also extended the enhancements made to the Jobs Support Scheme (JSS) and Foreign Worker Levy (FWL) for the month of April 2020 (as announced during the Solidarity Budget) to the month of May 2020. Additionally, with effect from April 2020, the JSS will also cover employees who are shareholders/ directors of the company, subject to meeting relevant conditions.
Apart from the various short-term measures announced in the Unity, Resilience and Solidarity Budgets to combat the negative economic impact brought about by COVID-19, the Government has also announced certain medium and longer-term measures (some of which have been further enhanced during the Resilience Budget) to move our transformation journey forward, while bringing our nation closer to KPMG’s vision of Singapore becoming the Transformation Capital of Asia.
Some of the key medium- and longer-term measures, amongst others, announced/ enhanced include the following:
For more details on these key medium and longer term measures to help businesses transform and emerge stronger when the economy recovers, please click here.