2.5 Million Singaporeans To Receive Up To S$500 Cash & Additional CDC Vouchers To Cope With Inflation

The payment will be disbursed in December as part of the new S$1.5b support package.

On 14 October 2022, Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong announced that the Government will roll out an additional S$1.5 billion support package to provide further cost-of-living relief for all Singaporean households, especially for the lower- to middle-income groups. 

This will include: 

• Cost-of-Living (COL) Special Payment 
• Additional CDC Vouchers 
• Public Transport Vouchers (PTVs) and subsidies
• MOE financial assistance schemes

Cost-of-Living (COL) Special Payment

Around 2.5 million adult Singaporeans will be eligible for up to S$500 in cash vouchers. 

This will be disbursed in December 2022 along with the Assurance Package for GST cash payout, which was announced at Budget 2022.

Eligible individuals should have an Assessable Income (AI) for Year of Assessment 2022 (YA2022) of S$100,000 and below and should not own more than one property.

Here are the full qualifying criteria: 

Source: MOF

CDC vouchers

Apart from the S$500 cash issued upfront, every household with at least one Singaporean citizen is eligible for an additional S$100 CDC voucher in January 2023.

Why additional? Because this is on top of the previous S$200 CDC voucher announced during Budget 2022 earlier this year. Thus effectively, households will receive a total of S$300 in CDC vouchers.

However, how you use this S$300 is not entirely up to your discretion. 

The S$300 CDC vouchers have to be split 50-50 between two broad expenditure categories. 

Each spending is capped at S$150 for grocery shopping at supermarkets and S$150 for heartland shops and hawkers.

Purportedly, permitting the donations of CDC vouchers is also underway. Stay tuned for government updates on this one.

Source: MOF

See also: Where to Use CDC Vouchers? Things You Didn’t Know You Could Spend Your CDC Vouchers On

Public transport vouchers (PTVs) and subsidies

Around S$200 million will be set aside by the government to cover the 10.6%-point fare increase which was previously announced by the Public Transport Council on 12 October 2022. 

600,000 PTVs worth S$30 each will be distributed to resident households with a monthly household income per person of not more than S$1,600. 

Each PTV is worth $30 and can be used to top up fare cards or buy Monthly Travel / Concession Passes.

MOE Financial Assistance Scheme

According to the Ministry of Education (MOE), the income eligibility criteria for Financial Assistance Schemes will be raised from 1 January 2023 onwards. This will affect primary, secondary, and pre-university students.

For post-secondary and education institutions, this raise will take effect from the start of the academic year 2023.

Besides that, the bursary quanta for full-time Institute of Technical Education (ITE) students will also be enhanced come the academic year 2023. But this subsidy increase is yet to be announced.

Meanwhile, government bursaries for diploma and undergraduate students are still under review. 

As shown, the income eligibility criteria will increase by S$250 and S$60 for gross household income and per capita income respectively. 

This is a great step forward in providing more assistance to students from lower-income families that were either marginalised or felt largely unsupported still.

Source: MOF

Updates on Assurance Package enhancements

Remember when GST was announced to increase by 2% in two waves? The first wave being 7% to 8% on 1 January 2023, and 8% to 9% on 1 January 2024? This was definitely not welcome news to many of us.

Despite that, the government has repeatedly assured that the enhanced Assurance Package, announced back in 2020, will help to cushion the additional GST expenses for the majority of Singaporeans for at least five years, and lower-income households for roughly 10 years.

In light of that, the sizing and components of the Assurance Package are expected to be reviewed to account for the record-high inflation rates this year. More details will be explained during Budget 2023.

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Goods & Services Tax (GST) Singapore – What is It, Current Rates, Output Tax