The Enhanced Cap for the Market Readiness Assistance Grant (MRA) will be extended till 31 March 2026.

The MRA helps companies expand into new markets overseas. The MRA covers, up to a limit, the costs of overseas market promotion, business development and new market set-up. The Enhanced Cap of SGD$100,000 was slated to expire on 31 March 2025. This enhanced cap will now be extended till 31 March 2026.

The MRA covers 50% of eligible costs for local SMEs. Each application is limited to one activity in a single overseas market. Therefore, if a company wishes to expand to multiple markets, it will need to submit multiple MRA applications.

The SGD$100,000 support cap per new market is broken down into three pillars with the following individual caps.

  • Overseas market promotion (capped at SGD$20,000)
  • Overseas business development (capped at SGD$50,000)
  • Overseas market set-up (capped at SGD$30,000)

If you would like to know more about the MRA, you can contact the Grant Application team at Raffles Corporate Services at [email protected].

 

The Double Tax Deduction for Internationalisation (DTDi) scheme will be extended till 31 December 2030.

The DTDi scheme allows businesses to claim a tax deduction of 200% on qualifying market expansion and investment development expenses. This scheme was supposed to expire on 31 December 2025. It will now be extended till 31 December 2030.

For a list of qualifying expenditure, you can refer to the IRAS webpage here or Enterprise Singapore’s website here.

 

The Enterprise Financing Scheme (EFS) will be enhanced. 

The EFS enables Singapore enterprises to access financing more readily. This financing is available to Singapore enterprises in various stages of growth. The EFS will be enhanced in two ways.

  1. A permanent increase in the maximum loan quantum under the EFS
    The increase will be from the current SGD$5 million to SGD$10 million. This will aid businesses in their trade financing needs to support their internationalisation efforts.
  2. A broadening of the scope of the EFS
    From 1 April 2025 till 31 March 2030, the Mergers and Acquisitions Loan will be enhanced beyond equity acquisitions to support targeted asset acquisitions.

 

The Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) Scheme will be extended.

The M&A Scheme was supposed to expire on 31 December 2025. The scheme will be extended till 31 December 2030. The M&A Scheme allows a Singapore company that makes a qualifying acquisition of the ordinary shares of another company to claim the following tax benefits.

a) An M&A allowance that is based on 25% of up to SGD$40 million of the value of all qualifying acquisitions per Year of Assessment (YA). This allowance is to be written down over five years.

b) 200% tax deduction on transaction costs incurred on qualifying acquisitions, subject to an expenditure cap of SGD$100,000 per YA.

 

If you need any assistance or more information on any of these schemes, you can contact the Raffles Corporate Services tax advisory team at [email protected].

 

Yours sincerely,

The editorial team at Raffles Corporate Services