All hands on deck as Singapore tackles Covid-19 and economic challenges

From left, the panellists at yesterday's roundtable: moderator, ST's Vikram Khanna; the Institute of Policy Studies' Faizal Yahya; Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat; OCBC's Linus Goh; and Ademco's Toby Koh.

"We're very happy with the announcement of the enhanced working capital financing loans. The outreach to our SME customers has so far come back with quite positive reaction to those schemes, so the uptake I think will start to grow quite quickly over the next few weeks." - OCBC's Linus Goh.

"There are a lot of SMEs who are still very healthy, who would actually still like to hire but they are holding back. Perhaps maybe in the enhanced Budget to have wage sharing or wage support for any new headcount that these companies are going to bring on board, that will encourage strong, healthy SMEs to start hiring right now, because there's going to be talent out in the market." - Ademco's Toby Koh.

"We just had a roundtable with small companies. From their point of view, they were already badly hit because of trade tensions before Covid-19. So the message would be: whatever you're doing now, just like the rental waivers, wage support, tax support, rebates, please do more." - Institute of Policy Studies' Faizal Yahya.