MRA Grant Market Entry into Malaysia & the Region

Yes — overseas market promotion is one of the three MRA activity categories, and marketing and publicity aimed at the target market sit under it. From 1 April 2026 MRA supports up to 70% of eligible third-party costs, capped at S$100,000 per company per new market, with sub-caps of S$20,000 for overseas market promotion, S$50,000 for overseas business development and S$30,000 for overseas market set-up. Which category a specific cost is assigned to is Enterprise Singapore's call, not the vendor's.

No. MRA has no pre-approved vendor list — that is PSG, a different scheme with different rules. Under MRA the applicant company identifies its own vendor and submits the vendor's credentials with the application, so GDI can be quoted into an MRA application today with no listing or accreditation involved. That also means you are free to compare quotes; nothing about the scheme locks you to one supplier. Approval of the application rests entirely with Enterprise Singapore.

Most often, already selling there. Your annual sales in the target market must not have exceeded S$100,000 in any of the preceding three years — so if Malaysia has been producing more than that, Malaysia is no longer a new market for you and MRA will not fund entry into it. The other gates are: registered and operating in Singapore, at least 30% local shareholding, and group annual turnover of S$100M or less or group employment of 200 or fewer. The market test is applied per market, so a company shut out of Malaysia may still qualify for Vietnam or the Philippines.

Before, without exception. Retrospective applications are not permitted, and a project counts as commenced if you have started work, made a payment to a third party, or signed a contractual agreement with one. Signing the vendor's contract first and applying afterwards is the single most common way Singapore SMEs lose funding they would otherwise have received. Applications should also be submitted no more than six months before the project start date, and each project may not exceed 12 months — so time the submission, do not just get it in early.

Less than the S$100,000 headline implies, and it is worth knowing that before you plan the budget. The S$100,000 is the per-market ceiling across all three activity categories combined; marketing and publicity sit under overseas market promotion, which carries its own S$20,000 sub-cap. At 70% support, that sub-cap is reached at roughly S$28,500 of qualifying promotion spend. Claims approaching the full S$100,000 generally involve business development or market set-up activity as well, which have their own S$50,000 and S$30,000 sub-caps.

No. Enterprise Singapore does not permit third parties to apply for or manage a grant on an applicant company's behalf. We prepare the quotation, the vendor credentials and the project scope, and walk you through what the portal asks for — but your own people submit it from your own Business Grants Portal account. Any consultant offering to run the application for you is describing something the rules do not allow, which tells you something about the rest of their advice.

Different market, different buyer, different shape of engagement. Ongoing SEO and digital advertising target the Singapore market and are billed as continuing work with no defined end. This is a fixed, time-boxed project aimed at one overseas country and documented so it can sit inside an MRA application: one destination landing site, one localised content set, one campaign per market, with a defined start and finish because an MRA project may not run beyond 12 months. If your goal is growth in the Singapore market, the ordinary SEO or paid ads engagement is the right one and MRA is not relevant to it.

MRA and EDG are expected to consolidate into a single scheme, EDGE, in the second half of 2026. Caps, categories and application mechanics may change at that point, and everything on this page describes MRA as it currently stands. If you are planning market entry across that transition, apply under the rules in force on the day you submit and confirm the current position with Enterprise Singapore or through your GoBusiness account. Grant terms change, and no vendor's website — including this one — is the authority on them.