Announcements from the Singapore Government Budget Speech 2009

The announcements for the budget are finally out. From the Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam in his Budget statement today, the Singapore government will spend S$20.5 billion to help businesses and workers. The aim is to ensure that .The major announcements include the following:

• A Resilience Package is announced and is broken into 5 parts (Quote from the Budget Speech):
• (i) “First, jobs for Singaporeans. We will spend $5.1 billion to help preserve jobs.
• (ii) Second, stimulating bank lending. We expect to extend $5.8 billion in government capital for a Special Risk-Sharing Initiative (SRI). Of this, a small fraction is likely to be eventually expended on provisions for loan losses.
• (iii) Third, enhancing business cash-flow and competitiveness. We will implement tax measures and grants for businesses that will cost $2.6 billion.
• (iv) Fourth, supporting families. We will spend $2.6 billion to support Singaporean households this year. This is on top of the benefits they will derive from the measures to preserve jobs.
• (v) Fifth, building a home for the future. We will spend $4.4 billion on developing first class infrastructure for the island and on expanded provisions for education and healthcare.”

• The corporate tax will be cut from 18% to 17% from Year of Assessment 2010. This means that our corporate tax rate now is lower than Hong Kong (17.5%).

For more details, please go to Singapore Budget 2009 site for more details. News sources: ChannelNewsAsia and Straits Times.