Budget 2024: Who are the big winners of SG’s new measures?

Six sectors will benefit the most from the budget, according to an analyst.

An expert believes six sectors will be the biggest winners from the measures announced in the 2024 budget.

RHB analyst Shekhar Jaiswal said banks, the consumer sector, healthcare, manufacturing and technology, telecommunications, and industrials will be the key beneficiaries of the budget measures.

Banks

Commenting on banks, Jaiswal said the $2b financial sector development fund top-up of the government will improve not only the core areas of banking, capital markets, asset management, and insurance but will also build capabilities in new areas like Fintech, as well as green and transition finance. 

“The topping up of the financial sector development fund should help the country maintain its status as a global financial service hub and benefit banks via lending, capital markets, and wealth management services, among others,” Jaiswal said.

Consumer

With the enhancement of the Assurance Package, the consumer sector will likely see a boost.

Jaiswal said the measures will “help support consumption demand, especially in the mass market and downstream sub-segment.”

“The extension of CDC vouchers will enable Singaporeans to purchase food at hawker centres, coffee shops, food courts, and supermarkets. Other additional cash handouts will enhance the purchasing power of Singaporean consumers – this can potentially flow into the domestic consumer downstream sub-segment at the food retail level,” the expert said.

Apart from the Assurance Package, Jaiswal said other schemes like the  $200 in LifeSG credits for all national servicemen, past and present, personal income tax rebates, changes in property tax, and a GST Voucher Fund top-up to defray GST expenses for lower and middle-income households, “will all potentially contribute to additional consumption for eligible Singaporean consumers.”

“ In view of the handouts potentially enhancing consumption power, we are positive on consumer staples companies, including Sheng Siong and Kimly. These companies, mainly retail food and basic necessity products, are the direct beneficiaries of better disposable income among consumers from the support measures,” Jaiswal said.

Industrials

The industrial sector, particularly those involved in defence and cybersecurity as well as energy security, will also win big from the budget.

In the budget, the government announced that it will establish a new National Cybersecurity Command Centre in the Punggol Digital District. Under the 2024 budget, the Ministry of Defence also remains to be the top ministry in expenditure.

“We view this as a positive for ST Engineering, which has a sizable exposure to Singapore and global defence spending and strong capabilities in cybersecurity,” Jaiswal said.

Meanwhile, companies such as Keppel Infrastructure Trust may also feel the impact of the budget, especially with energy security measures under the budget which includes the Future Energy Fund with an initial injection of $5b.

“We view these announcements positively for companies involved in the country’s transition to new green energy sources,” Jaiswal said, citing City Energy, a wholly-owned subsidiary of KIT.

“City Energy and Gentari, the renewable energy arm of Petronas, will conduct a 12-month study on the feasibility of building a pipeline from Malaysia to Singapore. Hydrogen is the largest component in town gas produced at City Energy’s Senoko Gasworks plant in northern Singapore, which also makes City Energy one of the largest last-mile distributors of hydrogen in the Republic. Under its partnership with Gentari, any pipeline to be established by the parties will supply hydrogen to the Senoko Gasworks plant,” Jaiswal said.

Healthcare

In the healthcare sector, RHB said IHH Healthcare and Raffles Medical Group would likely feel the impact of health-related measures introduced in the budget.

Under the budget, the government will provide a one-time MediSave Bonus of up to $300 for adult Singaporeans aged 21 to 50.

Finance Minister Lawrence Wong also announced that the government will update the per capita household income thresholds of the country's healthcare and associated social support subsidy schemes so that more families become eligible to benefit from them.

“The adjustments to the per capita household income thresholds of the country's healthcare and associated social support subsidy schemes should enable more families to access healthcare services from private healthcare players that are part of these subsidised programmes,” Jaiswal said.

Manufacturing & technology

The budget also underscored that there has been a significant number of leading semiconductor firms in Singapore, spanning the entire value chain from design and wafer fabrication to assembly and testing.

In his budget speech. Finance Minister Lawrence Wong said "companies have carved out a niche in speciality chips and NAND flash memory chips. These are critical enablers of automation, 5G, and EVs, and they are in high demand."

“Singapore is now a key node in the semiconductor supply chain – accounting for more than 10% of the global semiconductor market, and 20% of semiconductor equipment in the world,” Wong added.

Given this, Jaiswal said that in the longer term, the announced measures in the budget supporting the sector’s growth could benefit semiconductor-exposed stocks such as Frencken and UMSH. 

Telecommunications

The last sector likely to benefit the most from the budget is the telecommunications sector.

According to RHB, the additional resource the government will allocate to its Nationwide Broadband Network (NBN) will spur the “development of new AI-driven use cases and drive more innovative enterprise and retail smart solutions, with telcos morphing into ‘techcos’.”

“Both Singtel and StarHub are well positioned to capitalise on the investments with new cloud-centric converged offerings,” Jaiswal said.

“This comes on the back of the ongoing transition from a capex to an opex-led model, which offers better unit economics and a better customer value proposition,” the expert said.