Govt monitoring situation & prepared to provide more support to ease rising prices: Chee Hong Tat

03/10/2022

Understanding Singaporeans’ concerns over rising prices, the Government will consider providing more assistance or bringing forward support schemes if situation worsens.

Senior Minister of State Chee Hong Tat was replying to MP Ang Wei Neng’s (Nanyang) Parliamentary Question on high inflation rates and whether the Government will consider issuing more CDC vouchers on Oct 3.

SMS Chee reiterated that the Government is “carefully monitoring the situation” and noted that CDC vouchers are just one part of the overall support package from the Government.

He gave an example of a low-income couple with two young children living in a three room HDB flat. The family can expect to receive about S$3,700 in various forms of support such as cash, education top-ups, utilities and S&CC rebates and, of course, CDC vouchers.

Apart from the measures announced during Budget, SMS Chee added that the Government announced a S$1.5 billion package to fight inflation in June this year, with some of these measures still being implemented and rolled out.

More CDC vouchers?

MP Ang Wei Neng asked whether the Government will consider bringing the distribution of CDC
vouchers forward and issuing S$100 CDC vouchers to every Singaporean aged more than 21
years old instead of to each household.

In his supplementary question, Mr Ang raised the suggestion of giving more CDC vouchers to bigger households and giving the vouchers to individual Singaporeans, rather than one per household.

SMS Chee replied that there’s the GST Voucher cash payments of up to S$300 to eligible Singaporeans as a form of individual assistance.

“This is individual to eligible Singaporeans aged 21 years and above. And these are targeted to provide more assistance to lower income Singaporeans, which I think it’s a better and more effective way compared to giving everybody S$100 of CDC vouchers regardless of their wealth and income levels,” he said.

“Because we know given limited resources, it is correct to channel more funding to help our low income and vulnerable Singaporeans because they are more affected by rising prices.”

And for the rest of Singaporean households, broad-based schemes such as CDC vouchers and household utilities credits will help cushion the impact of higher prices.

Updates on CDC vouchers

In addition, SMS Chee also updated the House on the CDC vouchers.

The Government has disbursed two sets of CDC vouchers worth S$100 each in December 2021 and May 2022.

Describing the vouchers as “well utilised”, SMS Chee said that about 97 per cent and 87 per cent of Singaporean households have claimed the December and May tranches respectively.

These households have utilised S$180 million, which is about 80 per cent of the total vouchers available.

Under the $6.6 billion Assurance Package, two more tranches of CDC vouchers worth $200 each will be given to all Singaporean households in 2023 and 2024.

You can redeem your vouchers here. Both 2021 and 2022 vouchers will expire Dec 31, 2022.