At Budget 2015, Deputy Prime Minister (DPM) and Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam made Labour MP Patrick Tay a very happy man with the announcement of the SkillsFuture credits. The Assistant Secretary-General of the labour movement, ahem, coincidentally lobbied for an individual training account just this January,

Anyway, every Singaporean aged 25 and above would be given an initial $500 in SkillsFuture credits for approved training courses next year.

Hurrah!

So the questions on everyone's minds are: How and what could we spend it on?

Allow Tan Chuan-Jin, the Minister for Manpower, to explain in parliament yesterday:

1. SkillsFuture credits can be used for languages and culinary courses.

"Our intent is to help Singaporeans deepen their existing skills and also to provide options for people to broaden their horizons in areas outside their current fields. The courses we will support will clearly be diverse, comprising areas like aerospace, IT, and early childhood education, and also including areas such as languages and culinary skills, which some may have a strong interest for and wish to explore career opportunities in".

2. SkillsFuture credits is for you only and cannot be used by your employers.

"Let me be very clear that the credits are meant to support training initiated by individuals, not to fund training which employers send them for. In any case, we will continue to support employers who send their workers for training, by providing substantial course fee subsidies. We will also extend the existing Enhanced Training Support for SMEs Scheme by a further three years, to give SMEs additional support to send their local workers for training. Training funded by the credits, which are meant for individuals, will not allow employers to qualify for absentee payroll from WDA."

3. SkillsFuture credits aims to benefit Singaporeans from all walks of life.

"We will look into the helpful suggestions from many of you to see how we can help Singaporeans from all walks of life to benefit, including stay-at-home parents, the self-employed, and also persons with disabilities."

This means you can use the credits to brush up on your culinary skills and whip up this meal for Minister Tan:

Or you can learn some IT skills and set up a blog:

Top photo from here.

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