Market Readiness Assistance (MRA) Grant – Top 10 FAQs By SMEs

One of the many reasons why both locals and foreigners register a company in Singapore is because of the government’s business grants and incentives provided to local companies.

In an effort to drive local companies’ internationalisation plans, the government introduced the Market Readiness Assistance (MRA) grant, supported by Enterprise Singapore (ESG). To give clarity to the MRA grant, we have put together the top 10 questions that we usually get from SMEs as MRA consultants.

The Market Readiness Assistance (MRA) grant aims to give SMEs in Singapore an international boost to bring the business outside of the country.

With this grant, companies can claim reimbursements on the incurred costs for the qualifying activities when they set up their company overseas.

Companies who have successfully applied the grant will receive up to 70% funding for the eligible costs, capped at S$100,000 per new market. This means that you can tap into multiple jurisdictions at a time.

To qualify for the MRA grant, companies must fulfil the following criteria:

If you fulfil the requirements above, you would want to know how the MRA grant can help your business.

Here are 3 reasons, among many others:

Under the MRA grant, there are 3 broad categories – each serving a purpose and their eligible costs.

For example, for the market set-up, only items like license applications, product registrations, etc. are covered. Items such as retainer fees to maintain the company are not eligible and have to be forked out by the company itself.

You can download the eligible activities under each category here.

Here is a quick breakdown of the calculation for overseas market set-up:

Assuming the services for market set-up is worth S$43,000 and the government provides the maximum support of S$30,000, the cost to your business will be the difference between the 2 figures. This stands at S$13,000.

How much grant that your company can get is very dependent on what you submit to ESG. Every application is evaluated on a case by case basis.

In order to get the maximum amount for the grant, you will need a business plan that justifies a well thought out expansion plan.

On top of that, the quotation items must contribute to your expansion plan and within the scope of work. For example, if you are setting up a company and have intellectual property application fees, you must prove you have real substance for the application.

All claims can only be done once the business expansion project ends and has to be done within 3 months from the project end date.

Companies have to appoint an independent auditor to verify all the expenses and provide the relevant supporting documents. If the company engages an ESG-appointed auditor, you will be granted an audit grant fee, capped at S$500, or 70% of the audit fee.

After the project end date, a typical audit takes 1-2 weeks to complete before you can submit to ESG for claims.

If you use the MRA grant for salary payments of 12 months, you can only claim after 12 months and all salary payments are disbursed.

Yes, you can send directors overseas and claim under the MRA grant. Directors must be under the company’s payroll during the project period to claim their salaries of up to S$50,000.

As of July 2022, ESG is experiencing high volume and will take 3-4 months to respond, sometimes up to 6 months. During this time, ESG will revert with additional questions and your MRA consultant will liaise with the officer.

If you were to appoint Paul Hype Page & Co. as your MRA consultant for market set-up, we typically take 1 week to prepare your business plan. Once that is approved by the company, we will prepare to submit the ESG application via the Business Grants portal.

You can expect to kickstart your project 6 months after.

The business plan is the biggest difficulty as they break every part down for detailed analysis. The quotation you receive may hinder the application if your MRA consultant does not have the experience with grant quotations.

Details like phrasing of service items, title of invoices, and identifying whether certain activities are eligible matters in the quotation.

The application process is relatively easy and is done online through the Business Grant Portal.

Yes, Singapore permanent residents (PRs) are considered locals and are able to apply for the MRA grant, fulfilling the 30% local shareholding.

The MRA consultant that you choose will have a direct impact on your application. Here are some factors that you should look out for and questions you should ask them:

Items 1 and 2 are important as these information are required to be submitted along with your application.

For item 3 on local operation team, it is recommended that you engage an MRA consultant that has local presence as they will have a market knowledge and government contacts for seamless operational set-up. This is especially important if you are planning to set-up in a country where their main language is not English.

At Paul Hype Page, we have strong experience in helping expats globally to set up companies in Malaysia, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Japan, and Australia.

Beyond the supporting activities covered under the overseas market set-up, our team is well-equipped to execute end-to-end business solutions from annual compliance to visa applications.