Singapore Furniture Industries Council (SFIC) has rolled out a S$1.2 million (US$842,000) Member Assistance Scheme to provide financial relief for some 300 of its members.
Available from April 1, 2020, to September 30, 2021, the scheme is set to impact full and associate members who joined SFIC as at January 31 this year.
Depending on the length of their membership with SFIC, eligible members are set to receive between S$1,000 and S$6,000.
Mark Yong, president, SFIC, commented that the fund was set up not only to provide a “timely financial catalyst” for members to tide through the economic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, but also to prepare members “for the upturn when it comes”.
The amount will go towards helping members to defray business costs, improve business capabilities, save jobs, provide training for staff, as well as find business opportunities in new markets, said Yong.
Yong shared that one of SFIC’s main aims is to assist companies in retraining and retaining employees. As such, the representative body will work with government agencies to come up with a Resilience Training Programme for companies to make full use of the slowdown to equip staff with new skills or help them improve existing skills.
SFIC members can tap on their allocated relief amount to offset the cost of participating in SFIC and SFICI programmes. Their portion of the fund can also go toward defraying the costs of participating in SFIC and ESG-supported trade fairs, market advisory programmes and in-market business connection initiatives.
Additionally, members can tap on the scheme pursue digitalisation, in order to improve business processes and extend their market outreach.
SFIC is also waiving one year of membership subscription fees for new and existing full and associate members from July 2020.
The furniture industry representative body’s efforts are supported by Enterprise Singapore (ESG)’s SG Together Enhancing Enterprise Resilience (STEER) programme. ESG will match S$1 to every S$4 raised by SFIC under STEER. This means the government agency has committed to contribute S$225,000 to the S$1.2 million fund. This marks the first fund supported under the programme.
STEER intends to support similar funds set up by the Trade Associations and Chambers (TACs) or industry groupings.
By doing so, the ESG aims to help businesses with the challenges faced amid the pandemic and to continue transformation efforts in anticipation of economic recovery, said Tan Wu Meng, senior parliamentary secretary at the Ministry of Trade and Industry’s Committee of Supply speech in March.
Ted Tan, deputy CEO, ESG, has urged other trade associations and chambers to initiate similar relief efforts for their members.
