More employment subsidies granted

June 29, 2020

The Employment Support Scheme (ESS) Secretariat today published the list of the second batch of employers who have received wage subsidies.

 

The list covers 33,679 employers, 98% of whom are micro, small or medium-sized enterprises with fewer than 50 employees.

 

These employers received wage subsidies totalling about $6.5 billion for June to August and committed to maintaining a total paid headcount exceeding 280,000.

 

Since June 26, the ESS Secretariat has disbursed wage subsidies to the third batch of 30,016 successful employer applicants, with subsidies totalling around $7.7 billion and total committed headcount of paid employees of about 335,000.

 

The scheme’s first tranche, which received 168,799 applications from employers and 259,860 from the self-employed, closed on June 14.

 

The ESS Secretariat and the processing agent have so far approved 89,400 applications, accounting for 53% of the applications received from employers, involving a total wage subsidy of $19.1 billion and benefitting 836,000 employees.

 

The Secretariat has also disbursed the $7,500 one-off subsidy to about 74,000 self-employed people, involving a total of $556 million.

 

The work to process the remaining 70,000 applications from employers and 43,000 applications from the self-employed will continue, with a view to completing the processing of all qualified applications in mid-July.

 

The processing agent will check whether employers who received wage subsidies have spent all the subsidies during the June-August subsidy period on wages for their employees against the relevant income and the total number of paid employees as shown on the monthly Mandatory Provident Fund record certificates provided by the MPF trustees.

 

The processing agent will also compare this information with the total number of paid or unpaid employees, as shown on the MPF record certificates in March to see whether employers have made any redundancy.

 

Email subsidy@employmentsupport.hk or call the ESS hotline 1836 122 for enquiries.

Back to top