Government Package

The Singapore Government has came up with plans to help keep people employed and even those who are unemployed. This is because unemployment is expected to go up to 4.5% next year compared to the 2.2% this year.

Package includes

• 90% subsidy of training fees for blue collar workers and 80% subsidy of white collar workers ( This is to encourage companies to send their workers for training)
  

• Paying $6/hr for workers that are sent for training and $6.80/hr for older workers with less than A lvl ( This means that companies do not have to sack workers, instead they can send them for training and 'pay' them using this fund. So, even though the workers get paid lesser, at least they still have a job and are learning useful skills in preparation of the market recovery)

• Even for the jobless, they will pay $4/hr to low skilled people to attend training and up to $1000/mth to the higher skilled

All this is going to cost the government $600 million, and are being tapped from reserves that they have been saving up from the good years.

There is also the $2.3 billion loan and credit facilities to help out companies by making 'funds' more readily available to companies to help them tie over this time of financial uncertainly.


Finally, more 'goodies' are expected on Jan 22, when the government will announce the new budget.