Clarification by Minister for Manpower

Mr Speaker, with your leave, may I make a clarification with respect to my response to Mr Gerald Giam’s supplementary question on 5 January 2021, during Question Time for the Parliamentary Question "Rationale for Support Threshold in Jobs Growth Incentive Scheme".

Thank you, Sir. Mr Giam had asked about the take-up of the Jobs Growth Incentive (JGI) by companies. I had explained that we use CPF data to compute the JGI incentive in order to reduce the administrative burden for companies. I said that for every employer that has a local employee, for which he has CPF employer obligations, the employer is given two months in order to make the CPF payments. So, for someone who was employed, brought onboard at the start of the programme in September 2020, the employer actually has up till the end of November in order to make those payments. [Please refer to "Rationale for Support Threshold in Jobs Growth Incentive Scheme", Official Report, 5 January 2021, Vol 95, Issue No 15, Oral Answers to Questions section.]

I wish to make a correction to that last statement. For every employer that has a local employee, for which he has CPF employer obligations, the employer is given two weeks after the end of the month in order to make the CPF payments. However, the CPF Board must thereafter validate the data before handing it over to IRAS for further processing. So, for those who were employed, brought onboard at the start of the programme in September 2020, the data is only ready for use around the end of November. Thank you.