Hormuz Hits Home and Layoffs Hit Hard

A S$900M relief package drops, white-collar layoffs surge, a band gets banned for a flag, and LKY's bungalow is finally acquired.

Aug 03, 2026

Singapore business, finance and trade news, every Monday.

Marina Bay Sands and ArtScience Museum in Singapore — Photo by Partha Narasimhan on Unsplash

S$900M Relief Package Follows Shipping Delays

The government is pushing S$900 million ($667 million) out the door for the second time this year, raising its Enterprise Financing Scheme loan risk-sharing from 50 percent to 70 percent for SMEs that have been put under the gun by shipping delays and rising energy costs. About a third of the package will go to businesses; households will benefit from roughly two-thirds of the total. April's S$1 billion package came with some hope the Strait of Hormuz would reopen. Three months on, Siow says fighting has flared up again and "a durable ceasefire between the US and Iran is proving difficult."

Read more: Business Times (SME cash grants), Business Times (CDC vouchers rebates)

White-Collar Gets Brunt of Post-Covid Layoffs

Retrenchments numbered 4,500 in the second quarter, up 17.5 percent from Q1 and the highest since the fourth quarter of 2020, when 5,640 workers were given a pink slip. The pain is moving upmarket. Year-on-year, PME and technician layoffs rose from 2,730 in Q1 2025 to 3,320 in Q1 2026, while retrenched production workers, cleaners and labourers fell from 630 to 200 over the same period, a reversal from past downturns that hurt blue-collar workers hardest. Interestingly, though, overall employment grew for a 19th straight quarter, adding 10,700 jobs, and unemployment stayed flat at 2 percent. Precision engineering firms, riding semiconductor equipment orders connected to AI investment, reported the most upbeat outlook among manufacturers; petrochemical firms cited Middle East feedstock supply disruptions as their biggest drag.

Read more: Yahoo News SG (GDP growth), Business Times (sector outlook), Business Times (HR strategy), Business Times (resident unemployment)

Massive Attack Banned for Life

Robert Del Naja and Grant Marshall held up a Palestinian flag near the end of their July 29 show at The Star Theatre, shouted "Free Palestine," and by July 31 had been given, in addition to stern warnings, an entry ban and word that any future applications for the band to perform in Singapore will be rejected. The band says its entire touring party was held after the stunt, questioned, and some members were even subjected to hotel room searches. IMDA is investigating whether promoter Lushington Entertainments breached licence conditions that prohibits the display of flags "in support of any causes," a clause the promoter had admitted before the show. Del Naja said the band "did not imagine that merely holding up the flag of a sovereign state recognised by 157 countries" would break the law, but unfortunately for them, the Foreign National Emblems (Control of Display) Act comes with a fine of up to $500, six months' jail, or both.

Read more: Straits Times (Public Order Act), Bandwagon Asia (detention), Jpost (Singapore demographics), Ca News Yahoo (1949 Act cited), BBC (band reaction)

State Takes Keys to LKY Bungalow

The Government took possession of 38 Oxley Road on July 31, closing out a long-running dispute that has split Singapore's first family (and many observers) for more than a decade. The National Heritage Board is going to look into how best to turn the pre-war bungalow into a public space (a heritage park is one of the options), but for now the gates will stay shut. Lee Hsien Yang, the property's last owner and Lee Kuan Yew's son, posted on Facebook that "no amount of sophistry" changes his father's wish that the house be demolished, calling the compulsory acquisition "a repudiation of his values and a flagrant disregard for his long-held wish." The site was gazetted a national monument on December 12, 2025, five weeks after the Government first said that intended to acquire it.

Read more: South China Morning Post (redevelopment restrictions), Business Times (minister quotes)

Beauty Chain Escrows S$1M After Trapping Customers in Masks

DNA Brands, which runs Beautique, The Mineral Boutique and five other beauty chains, will park up to S$1 million ($740,000) with an escrow agent after Singapore's competition watchdog found staff kept customers pinned in treatment rooms (with masks freshly applied) even after sessions had already ended, until they agreed to buy more(!?). Employees asked how many credit cards customers held, ostensibly to check promotions, but in reality so that they could get a sense of a ~~victim’s~~ customer’s spending limits. For elderly clients, some staff checked CPF balances, helped raise withdrawal limits, and walked customers to nearby banks or ATMs. More than fifty complaints were lodged between mid 2024 and late 2025 with claims of more than S$980,000. At least 40% of complainants were aged 60+. Wild.

Workers' Party Drafts Economic Playbook

The Workers' Party, which holds 10 of 97 elected seats, will table a motion in Parliament tomorrow asking MPs to back a "more equal and inclusive economy" less reliant on multinationals, with most of its 12 MPs expected to speak. Aljunied GRC MP Kenneth Tiong, who filed the motion, used a report of Standard Chartered moving jobs to India as a sign the old MNC playbook is fraying. Sengkang GRC MP Jamus Lim said the push is a complement to, not a substitute for, the government's Economic Strategy Review. The WP wants more attention on local companies, in addition to startup R&D and Singaporean capital going abroad, gaps it says the review left unfilled.

Read more: Straits Times (2023 motion precedent), AsiaOne (Tiong)

Renters Gain Ground as Private Car Fleet Shrinks

There were 516,237 private cars on the road at the end of June, the lowest count since 2019, at the same time that rental cars found a record 97,567, 14.9 percent of the fleet compared to 2021’s 10.5 percent. COE premiums this year have run S$102,009 to S$130,889 ($75,700 to $97,100), up from S$65,010 to S$116,002 in 2024, which seems like it’s been enough to make occasional drivers pencil the math on leasing instead. Rental operators aren't chasing the demand hard. Self-drive numbers grew from 33,765 to 36,317 since December, and chauffeured rental cars were reduced from 62,092 to 61,250, partly on a February 2025 rule locking business-owned ride-hail cars into the trade for three years before resale.

Read more: Business Times (ownership share drop), The Independent Singapore (household savings)

Four-Room Flats Lead Million-Dollar HDB Rush

1,002 HDB resale flats traded hands for prices above the million-dollar mark between January 1 and July 16, putting 2025 on pace to beat last year's record of 1,593. Four-room units, not even the bigger five-roomers, are doing most of the work. Of 110 such deals tracked by PropNex agents, 71% went to buyers aged 30 to 49, and roughly seven in ten were PMETs. The modal income band of buyers (35.5%), pulled in between S$10,001 and S$16,000 ($7,700 to $12,300) a month.

Bloomberg Owes S$290,000 More in Suit

Bloomberg and reporter Low De Wei must pay an additional S$290,000 ($215,000) in legal costs to K Shanmugam and Tan See Leng, on top of the S$460,000 ($341,000) in damages awarded last month. Justice Audrey Lim split the costs evenly at S$145,000 ($107,000) per minister. The case centered on a December 2024 article about secrecy in “good class bungalow” deals, including the S$88 million ($65 million) sale of Shanmugam's former Queen Astrid Park home to UBS Trustees and Tan's nearly S$27.3 million ($20.2 million) non-caveated purchase in Brizay Park. Lim’s judgement found that Low knew parts of the story were false or published without caring whether they were true, and that Bloomberg's removal of a paywall showed malice by making the article accessible to a wider audience.

MERCOSUR Deal for Brazil, 29th FTA

The MERCOSUR-Singapore pact took effect for Brazil and Singapore on August 1, opening preferential access to a bloc that’s worth almost $3 trillion and is captive to 295 million consumers. More than a quarter of tariff lines dropped immediately, and 96 percent will be gone within 15 years. About 200 Singaporean firms already work in Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. Brazil, MERCOSUR's largest economy, counts Singapore as its biggest trading partner in Southeast Asia, and the four bloc members together made up more than 30 percent of Singapore's Latin America goods trade in 2025. MTI is also looking to the deal for food security, with Brazilian meat, fruit, vegetables and "superfoods" among the imports it wants to get more of. Argentina's ratification remains pending.

US Eggs Return After Two Decades

American chicken eggs are back in Singapore for the first time since the early 2000s, coming in by air in July after US and Singapore agriculture officials agreed on export certification and disease tracing. Greg Tyler of the USA Poultry and Egg Export Council expects 1.2 to 1.5 million eggs a month to start (that’s something like 1 or 2 percent of local consumption), with a longer-term target of 10 percent. Four US producers are signed on so far.

Transport R&D Budget Doubles for Drones and AI

Singapore's transport R&D budget will more than double to S$800 million ($592 million) over the next five years, with about two-thirds going to autonomy and digital-twin work on land, air and sea, including drones inspecting tracks and AI flagging faults before technicians are able to see personally. No depots have been named, and no timetable has been set.

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