Budget for the future

ONE of the major themes of the 2015 Budget is to strengthen social support to ensure assurance in retirement and enhance support for middle-income families. Below are some of the key measures that were introduced to achieve the objectives.

Increasing CPF retirement savings

Much debate has centred on whether our Central Provident Fund (CPF) is sufficient to ensure retirement adequacy, especially as many Singaporeans are asset-rich by the homes that they own (largely funded by their CPF monies), but may not have enough cash on hand to see through their retirement.

In a bid to strengthen Singapore's social security system and also to help Singaporeans save more for their retirement, the 2015 Budget announced that the monthly CPF salary ceiling will be raised from S$5,000 to S$6,000 with effect from Jan 1, 2016. This …