And for the first time, the government will be dipping into its reserves to draw S$4.9 billion to fund two temporary and extraordinary measures. They are the Jobs Credit and a Special Risk—Sharing Initiative.
The government will help employers with their wage bills by giving a 12 per cent cash grant on the first S$2,500 earned by each employee on the CPF payroll.
The scheme, called Jobs Credit, is for a year and will be paid out very quarter, starting from March.
This will be equivalent to a nine percentage point cut to the Central Provident Fund (CPF).
So retrenchment will be made the last resort.
But will this fully work? Perhaps not. Because with 12 per cent cash grant, if the company has come to the depth of non-profiteering, they would still rather retrench,shut down, or vice versa, to save on 100%.
However, this scheme does help to a certain point, in retaining manpower through paying less CPF to the government, and this will mean paying overall lesser salaries to employees. This nevertheless does help to cut cost. Depending on the ratio of the company's strength to their earning, this can be of a great help, or little help, or of no help at all.
One thing i'm not sure about, are all MNC/SME companies in Singapore included? I mean companies such as US Merril Lynch, RHB, or any other overseas investments banks located in Singapore, are they inclusive?
Profiteering companies in Singapore also shared the same priviledges, of getting the job credit scheme. Although this may sounds abit annoying, it is cited by one official that it has to help everyone in times of need, to share and balance the society with unbianess towards all companies in Singapore. And if a Profiteering company, though does not need help, the job credit scheme is to help to maintain the company's strength, to prevent any future adverse effect of the company's decision to retrench one or few of it's staffs.
Base on all these, let's hope the economy will recover in times to come.
Learning point from to government is, even for individual like us, we need to have a 'personal reserve fund' for ourselves, an untapped fund place in the bank for us to use, only for "Rainy" seasons. The best thing is not to tap on the reserve fund,and let it grow as long as possible. Should we need, we will only tap a very small portion of it once awhile, and make sure we place an input now and then back into our reserve fund to let it grow, perhaps, to even see a 'surplus' of our every intended amount saved.
Right now, I'll have to take my leave. Take care!
