Singapore to invest $800m in fight against COVID-19

A bulk of this allocation will go to the country’s health ministry.

Singapore has set aside an $800m budget to fight the impact of COVID-19 on the country, a bulk of which will be allotted to the Ministry of Health, finance minister Heng Swee Keat said in his budget speech.

The subsidies for the 2012-launched Community Health Assistance Scheme (CHAS) have also been extended to cover Singaporeans’ chronic conditions regardless of income.

These follows the other healthcare investments into healthcare in the past years, which included the $6.1b set aside for the Merdeka Generation Fund in 2019. 

Singapore’s healthcare spend has tripled over the last decade, from $4b to $12b. PwC’s leader of health industries Dr. Zubin Daruwalla noted that it is vital for all stakeholders across the health industries to work towards lowering the rising costs of healthcare via solutions such as intelligent automation and data monetisation.

Daruwalla also noted that the $300m allotment of the budget for deep tech startups will rain over med tech startups. “Success in such startups will require not only committed investment but also an integrated ecosystem that allows startups to navigate in a timely and efficient manner,” said Daruwalla.