Covid-19: Wage support, other relief measures to be extended to tide firms over longer circuit breaker

SINGAPORE — The Government will extend key support measures for businesses as the circuit breaker measures are to last for a month longer than initially planned, Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat said on Tuesday (April 21). 

Speaking at a media conference on the extension and extra measures to stop the spread of Covid-19, Mr Heng said that the Government will, among other things, extend a 75 per cent wage subsidy under the Jobs Support Scheme to all economic sectors, for the month of May.

Earlier, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong had announced that the circuit breaker measures, originally slated to end on May 4, would be extended for another four weeks to June 1.

Mr Heng said: “We understand that the enhanced measures and circuit breaker extension will have a significant impact on businesses.

“To support our companies and workers we will extend key support measures in the Solidarity Budget to the month of May.”

The Solidarity Budget was unveiled earlier this month to give greater support to Singaporeans during this crisis, and came after Budget 2020 on Feb 18 and the supplementary Resilience Budget on March 26.

These were the measures he announced on Tuesday:

• The 75 per cent wage subsidy under the Job Support Scheme will be extended to all sectors for the month of May. Previously, this subsidy was offered to employers to cover 75 per cent of Singapore workers’ gross monthly wages for the first S$4,600 of wages earned in April. 

• The Job Support Scheme will also be expanded to include certain groups of shareholder-directors. These are employees of a company who are also shareholders and directors and will miss out on both this scheme and the Self-employed Income Relief Scheme. This support will only apply to companies that were registered on or before April 20, and for the wages of shareholder-directors with assessable income of S$100,000 or less in the year of assessment 2019. This is expected to benefit about 50,000 shareholder-directors.

• The foreign worker levy due in May will be waived.

• Employers will be given another S$750 in foreign worker levy rebates for every foreign worker employed.

• Families whose breadwinners have lost their jobs can apply for the Covid-19 Support Grant from May 1 and the S$500 Temporary Relief Fund.

“I urge our business leaders: Do your best to retain your workers and make full use of the various grants for training and other schemes for upgrading corporate capabilities,” Mr Heng said.

“The months of April and May will be a test of our resilience as individuals and as a society. We cannot be certain when the crisis will end but what is certain is we are here for you and we’ll support you.”