No top-up to SG Culture Pass for now; MPs raise suggestions for books and arts giving
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The Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth will monitor how and whether people use the SG Culture Pass before making adjustments.
ST PHOTO: BRIAN TEO
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SINGAPORE – The Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth is encouraged by the take-up rate for the SG Culture Pass launched in September 2025 but will not make immediate top-ups for now.
As the scheme started recently, the ministry will monitor how and whether people use it before making adjustments, said Minister of State for Culture, Community and Youth Baey Yam Keng. He was responding to Nominated MP (NMP) Terence Ho during the debate on the ministry’s budget on March 5.
The $100 credit given to Singaporeans aged 18 and above to spend on local arts and heritage activities has so far reached over a third of those eligible, with 1.2 million people registering for the scheme. Set out in the previous Budget statement, it has come to be seen as a barometer of whether people could be enticed to participate in cultural activities after financial hurdles are removed.
Associate Professor Ho, in his question to the Government, suggested periodic top-ups and also bonus credits when a person spends the pass on a new genre, such as a heritage buff stepping into the theatre for the first time.
As a published author, he also wondered if the Government would consider better supporting local publishers and bookstores – which he called a public good – raising the possibility of grants to host book clubs or incentives for commercial developers to lease spaces to bookshops.
Mr Baey did not directly address these, but said the expansion of the SG Culture Pass to Singapore literature titles from March 1 directly benefits publishers and bookstores.
Workers’ Party Non-Constituency MP Eileen Chong and NMP Kenneth Goh both highlighted the relatively small proportion of charitable giving for the arts, at less than 2 per cent of the total.
Associate Professor Goh called for tax deductions of up to 400 per cent for multi-year giving to the arts and sports sectors, up from 250 per cent now, saying: “If we are prepared to incentivise investments in technology capability because it strengthens economic competitiveness, we should also be deliberate in incentivising cultural investments that strengthen social cohesion.”
Ms Chong used the figure as one of the reasons the local arts ecosystem remains fragile, citing the closure of indie cinema The Projector, theatre company Pangdemonium and arts centre The Substation.
She also cited the “paradox” of three-quarters of Singaporeans agreeing that the arts benefit the community, according to the National Arts Council’s biennial Population Survey on the Arts, but just three in 10 consuming local arts content.
She said one way is to cultivate the habit in youth, who are already the most willing attendees, with more subsidised student pricing, co-payment via Edusave and including those between 13 and 18 in the SG Culture Pass.
With some 90 per cent of the arts ecosystem being small organisations, she also proposed a new micro-grant for more humble community-facing arts projects.
“If we believe that the arts build character empathy and understanding, then we should treat access to them with the same seriousness we treat access to education and enrichment,” she said.
