By now, you’ll have to be living under a rock if you have yet to hear about the Resilience Budget that was detailed by Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat last Thursday, 26th March.
The Resilience Budget is rather beefy and comprises a broad-based approach to help all Singaporeans, especially those badly hit by Covid-19. Paired with the measures and schemes announced during Budget 2020, the entire package will cost an unprecedented $55 billion!
A key highlight of the Budget includes the waiving of property tax for qualifying commercial properties, such as hotels, serviced apartments, tourist attractions, shops and restaurants. The waiver has been increased from 15% or 30% previously, to a whopping 100%!
So, what does this mean for tenants and those with businesses that are badly impacted?
It means that the Government is urging the landlords to pass on these rebates to tenants by reducing rentals.
Progressively, we are seeing more and more responsible landlords coming up with different plans to help their tenants. These landlords, including big brand names like CapitaLand, Frasers and Mapletree, are offering rebates ranging 2 to 2.5 months.
Some companies, such as CapitaLand and Mercatus, are even suspending rents on top of offering rebates!
Therefore, tenants are encouraged to speak with their landlords and figure out an arrangement, which could include the temporary deferral of rents.
However, it bears noting that these payments and rebates are likely to be made progressively, as the current Covid-19 situation is unpredictable and likely to last beyond a year. Hence, we can describe it as a situation where Singapore would rather dish out the help in stages than deplete it in one fell swoop. In addition, it would be a modest estimate that the global economy could take another 2-3 years to fully recover from this.
After all that’s been said and done, please take heart, encourage one another and get through this together!
#SGUnited #togetherwecan #resiliencebudget
