The Resilience Package involves expenditure of S$5.1 billion (US$3.4 billion) to preserve jobs, Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam said in his 2009 budget address in Parliament.

"The package aims to save jobs to the maximum extent possible in the recession, and to help viable companies stay afloat," he noted.

As part of the initiative, the government will introduce a Jobs Credit scheme to reduce the cost for employers of employing Singaporeans during the crisis. This essentially is a grant disbursed quarterly to businesses, and is calculated based on 12 percent of the first S$2,500 (US$1,660) earned by each employee under the country's pension program, or CPF.

The government will also increase spending on various schemes to help Singaporeans to upgrade their skills.

Among these, fee subsidies for courses aimed at PMETs (professionals, managers, executives and technicians) will rise from 80 percent to 90 percent under the Skills Programme for Upgrading and Resilience (SPUR) initiative. SPUR provides course fee support for companies and individuals and absentee payrolls for companies that send their workers for training.

The country will also commit S$900 million (US$602 million) in the next few years to spur innovation and research and development.

These includes the setting up of a S$230 million (US$154 million) Singapore Media Fusion (SMF) fund for the media and digital entertainment industry "where opportunities are growing rapidly". The government will provide grants to help local enterprises export content, applications and services overseas, as well as to build up a world-class media talent base.

To encourage firms in the sector to take advantage of intellectual property (IP) from Singapore, they will also be allowed to write down the cost of acquiring qualifying IP rights in two years instead of five currently.