SINGAPORE – More than 650,000 Singaporean households have claimed the latest tranche of Community Development Council (CDC) vouchers worth $300 each in two days, said Ms Low Yen Ling, Senior Minister of State at the Ministry of Trade and Industry.
Together with the $500 vouchers distributed in January – which about 1.3 million households claimed – each Singaporean household will receive a total of $800 in 2024.
Between its launch in Dec 2021 and the end of 2024, the CDC vouchers scheme is expected to have spurred $900 million of spending at participating hawkers and heartland businesses, said Ms Low at the Singapore Heartland Enterprise Summit on June 27.
To date, the CDC vouchers scheme has catalysed close to $650 million of spending in participating heartland merchants and hawker stalls.
Singaporean households have used more than $1 billion of CDC vouchers across the last four tranches.
More than 23,000 hawkers and heartland merchants are now on the CDC vouchers scheme, which has helped them to jump onto digital platforms as well as increased customer reach.
“Today, more than nine in 10 heartland shops across Singapore offer at least one e-payment solution, while about two-thirds have adopted digital tools and platforms such as Google Business Profiles, Carousell and Shopback,” said Ms Low.
The CDC vouchers scheme was first introduced in June 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic to help lower-income households defray their daily expenses, while supporting local merchants and hawkers affected by the pandemic. It was expanded to all households in December 2021 to thank Singaporeans for their solidarity during the pandemic, and to aid heartland businesses’ recovery.
To further encourage innovation, the Federation of Merchants’ Associations Singapore organises the Heartland Innovation Challenge (HIC), which helps businesses tackle pressing challenges by co-creating innovative solutions with tertiary student teams.
Enterprises that took part in the challenge include UnidBox Hardware, which has five outlets selling household and hardware items.