MOF disburses $28b under the job support scheme

The job support scheme also helped save 165,000 jobs in 2020.

The Ministry of Finance (MOF) Assessment of the Impact of Key COVID-19 Budget Measures report revealed how the country's COVID-19 measures mitigated the short-term impact of the crisis and helped prevent potential longer-term economic scarring.

Some of the key support schemes evaluated on the paper were the Jobs Support Scheme, which disbursed over $28b and helped save 165,000 local jobs from April 2020 to December 2021; the three financing schemes, with the Temporary Bridge Loan Programme as its main; the SGUnited Jobs and Skills Package, which provided more than 166,300 jobs and skills opportunities; and the COVID-19 Recovery Grant, which has supported 27,500 workers as of December 2021.

According to the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the Budget measures, supported by an accommodative monetary policy, supported Singapore's real GDP growth by 6.6 percentage points and 0.8 percentage points in 2020 and 2021, respectively. Further, without fiscal and monetary policy support, the resident unemployment rate would have hit 6.1% in 2020 and 7.5% in 2021, 2 percentage points and 4 percentage points higher than the actual respective rates. These Budget measures kept businesses going and preserved jobs for local workers, helping more families and individuals through the crisis.

Meanwhile, public health measures and concerted efforts to vaccinate a very high proportion of the population are estimated to have averted about 8,000 COVID deaths between 1 August and 31 December 2021. At 15.7 per 100,000 population, Singapore's COVID mortality rate is among the lowest in the world.