Budget 2020: Additional $800 Million to Be Used to Fight COVID-19; Bulk of it Goes to MOH

If there’s something you need to learn about money during the COVID-19, it’s this: money’s important.

For a country to fight the virus, she’ll need deep pockets: from contact tracing to footing the bills of the patients to giving out masks and information, all these cost money.

Singapore might be an expensive place to live in, but it’s crisis like this that you’d realise all the taxes you’ve paid are extremely useful after all.

Additional $800 Million to Be Used to Fight COVID-19; Bulk of it Goes to MOH

It’s no surprise that Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat started his speech with COVID-19 as a topic.

He spoke about the gloomy repercussions of what the COVID-19 has made to the economy and society, and emphasises that there are still uncertainties; we don’t know what’s going to happen next.

In view of this, the Finance Minister has set aside $800 million purely just to fight the virus. That is on top of the budget that’s already allocated to the healthcare industry.

A bulk of it will go to the Ministry of Health that has been tirelessly doing their best to contain the outbreak.

The estimated FY2019 overall operating expenditures for Ministry of Health is at about SGD$11 billion.

As you can probably tell, that’s a lot of money.

But containing the virus isn’t the only thing that the Finance Minister has to do.

Lots of money are also set aside to help people who are affected by COVID-19.

$4 Billion to Support Businesses and Affected Industries

It’s easy to dismiss the consequences of the outbreak if you don’t work in an industry that’s affected severely by it.

To have a tangible feel of the repercussions, simply take a walk down a shopping mall. Empty shops mean more people’s livelihoods are affected, and that could have ripple effects on other industries.

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This is why the Government is setting aside $4 billion to support affected industries. In a nutshell, this is what they’ll do:

• The Government will pay 8% of every Singaporean or Singapore PR employee’s pay, up to a cap of $3,600, for three months. This cost the Government a whopping $1.3 billion
• 5 main sectors that are affected by COVID-19 will receive additional support. They are tourism, aviation, food services, retail and point-to-point transport services (i.e. taxis and PHVs)

For tourism, there will be a bridging loan programme for cash-flow support and up to 30% property tax rebate for 2020.

For aviation, there would be rebates on aircraft landing and parking charges (yes, it’s very expensive to land on Changi Airport), and there will also be rental rebates for shops in Changi Airport.

For food services, all hawkers in NEA-managed hawker centres will receive a one-month renal wavier.

For retail, there will be half-month rebate for talents in Government-managed properties.

And as for point-to-point transport services, it’s been announced earlier that there would be financial support for taxi / PHV drivers.