$6.8m Digital Resilience Bonus bolsters food services and retail industry

The DRB payouts are used to support the digitalisation of SMEs.

2,700 companies in the food service and retail industry have qualified for the Digital Resilience Bonus, with grants totalling $6.8m.

The payouts, distributed between August and October, were introduced as part of Singapore’s Fortitude Budget, announced in the midst of the global pandemic in 2020.

The DRB payouts are given on top of other enhanced digitalisation support under the Infocomm Media Development Authority’s SMEs Go Digital programme.

As at September 2020, more than 50,000 SMEs have adopted digital solutions under the SMEs Go Digital programme.

“We introduced the Digital Resilience Bonus (DRB) to encourage our Food Services and Retail enterprises in their digital transformation journey. More SMEs are now seeing the benefits of digitalisation on multiple fronts, by reaching new customers with e-commerce and becoming more efficient in internal processes,” chief executive of IMDA Jane Lim said.

“We want to encourage SMEs that have not digitised to start doing so now, and for those who have started, to look at the next steps, during this period when the DRB and enhanced Productivity Solutions Grant are available,” she added.