The EDGE Grant: What Replaces PSG for Singapore F&B Operators

If you run an F&B business in Singapore and you have been putting off a POS, inventory or kitchen-display project, the ground is about to move. The Productivity Solutions Grant you were planning to use is being folded into a new scheme called EDGE, along with the Enterprise Development Grant and the Market Readiness Assistance grant. One application, one shopfront, up to $100,000 a year for eligible activities, from the second half of 2026.

That is the short version, and it is genuinely good news for anyone who has ever tried to work out which of three grants their new ordering system falls under. But there is a lot of secondhand summary circulating right now, some of it mixing up numbers that belong to different schemes. Here is what the primary sources actually say, and what it means for an operator with a project sitting in the pipeline.

What is the EDGE grant, and which grants does it replace?

EDGE was announced by Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry Low Yen Ling at MTI’s Committee of Supply debate this year, under the third thrust of the Business Refresh Package. The wording is worth quoting because it is unusually plain: EDGE “will provide a single shopfront for government grants, merging MRA, PSG, and EDG”.

The three grants being merged are the ones most Singapore SMEs already know:

• PSG — the Productivity Solutions Grant, the one F&B operators use for pre-scoped IT solutions, equipment and consultancy services from pre-approved vendors.
• EDG — the Enterprise Development Grant, for larger customised capability projects.
• MRA — the Market Readiness Assistance grant, for taking a business overseas.

The stated mechanism is administrative simplification rather than a new pot of money: MTI’s own description is that combining EnterpriseSG’s three flagship grants means businesses “only need to submit a single application under the combined grant framework”. If your project is larger than what the single application covers, the speech is explicit that businesses requiring more support for customised projects “can continue to apply to EnterpriseSG”.

One small point of hygiene before you write anything internally: MTI did not expand the EDGE acronym in the announcement, and neither does IMDA’s vendor documentation. Several expansions are circulating on advisory blogs. If you are putting this in a board paper, call it “the EDGE grant” and leave it there.

When does EDGE actually start, and can I still use PSG now?

You will see two dates quoted, and the confusing part is that both are correct — they answer different questions.

MTI’s announcement says EnterpriseSG “will launch EDGE in the second half of 2026”. That is the policy-level commitment. IMDA’s guide for pre-approved solution vendors is operationally tighter: it says EDGE “is targeted to go live from 2H 2026”, that solutions still awaiting approval when their category’s migration window opens will be listed on EDGE when it goes live “(October 2026 onwards)”, and — unambiguously — that all the mandatory package changes vendors are making now “will take effect upon the launch of EDGE in October 2026”.

So: second half of 2026 is the announced window, and October 2026 is the date the vendor-facing machinery is being built towards. Treat October as your planning assumption and the second half of 2026 as the formal position.

On whether PSG still works today — yes, the existing schemes are still the live route until EDGE launches, and at the time of writing no cut-off date for final PSG applications has been published. IMDA’s guide describes solutions continuing to be listed on the Business Grants Portal in the interim and moving to EDGE afterwards. The practical implication for an operator is straightforward: if you have a project scoped, quoted and ready, there is no reason to sit on your hands waiting for a scheme whose support rates have not been published yet.

How much can an F&B business actually get under EDGE?

The one number confirmed by both primary sources is this: EDGE “will support up to $100,000 per year for eligible activities”. MTI’s factsheet on the Business Refresh Package adds an eligibility point worth noting: EDGE “will support all Singapore businesses, including non-SMEs”, and states that more details will be provided when EDGE is launched later this year.

Here is where a lot of the secondhand coverage goes wrong, so it is worth slowing down. In the same speech, a separate set of enhancements was announced for helping businesses expand overseas. Support levels for those schemes go up from 50% to 70% for SMEs and from 30% to 50% for non-SMEs, covering the MRA grant, the Business Adaptation Grant and the Global Innovation Alliance. The MRA grant separately keeps its own $100,000 grant cap, drops its new-markets criteria, and is extended to all local businesses including non-SMEs.

Those are internationalisation changes. The speech states that once EDGE launches, “the enhancements to MRA that I have just mentioned earlier will come under EDGE grant” — they move under the EDGE roof, but they are not a blanket EDGE funding rate for every activity. The factsheet is precise about this: from 2H 2026, eligibility for MRA-supported activities extends to local non-SMEs with support of up to 50% of eligible costs, alongside the uplift to 70% for local SMEs. Those percentages attach to overseas expansion activities inherited from MRA. If you see a summary claiming EDGE funds 70% of your new POS system because you are an SME, that summary has merged two different announcements. No support level has been published for domestic digitalisation activities under EDGE.

Similarly, the two $100,000 figures are not the same figure. One is EDGE’s annual ceiling for eligible activities; the other is the MRA grant’s long-standing cap that was extended again this year. Quoting them interchangeably in a funding plan will produce a number you cannot defend.

What changes about buying a POS or inventory system?

This is the part almost nobody is writing about, and it is the part that will actually change your purchase.

Under PSG as you know it, a vendor’s pre-approved solution is a fixed package: a defined bundle at a defined price. In preparation for EDGE, IMDA requires every pre-approved solution to move to a Flexible Packages (Flexi) structure, which involves two mandatory changes: Variable Cost Items (VCI), described as configurable add-on cost components attached to a base package, and a standardised Unit of Measurement replacing the free-text UOM fields vendors used to fill in themselves.

Once approved, those packages appear in a Package Builder on the SMEs Go Digital platform, where the applicant selects a base package and adds the variable items their project actually needs. IMDA’s own worked example: a base package built for 10 users, 2 man-days of setup and 1 day of training, to which an applicant adds extra licences or additional man-days of professional services for data migration.

For a restaurant group, that is a meaningful improvement. The mismatch between a fixed 10-user package and a business running four outlets with different terminal counts has always been handled off to the side, in scope that sat outside the grant. A structure with explicit add-ons and standardised units makes it far easier to compare two vendors honestly — and much harder for a quote to hide implementation days inside a headline package price.

Why are food-services solutions still marked “TBC”?

IMDA is activating the migration progressively, by solution category, starting from April 2026. Vendors must submit a Change Request — a “Flexi-CR” — for each approved solution, and they are given a submission window per category. The published schedule so far runs:

• Document Management and Mobile Access System — window opened 14 April 2026, deadline 22 April 2026.
• HR solutions — opened 11 May 2026, deadline 22 May 2026.
• Digital Marketing Packages and E-Commerce (Online Shop, B2C) — opened 25 May 2026, deadline 12 June 2026.
• Accounting Management, Inventory Management and Sales Management — opened 12 June 2026, deadline 26 June 2026.
• Cyber security, other generic solutions, and the sector-specific category covering Food Services (alongside logistics, personal care, precision engineering, retail and wholesale trade) — TBC.

If you are buying a POS system, note that it may sit in more than one of these buckets depending on how the vendor registered it — sales and inventory management were migrated in June, while sector-specific food services solutions have not been scheduled. That is not a warning sign about any particular vendor; it is simply the order IMDA chose. But it does mean the answer to “is your solution already migrated?” will differ from vendor to vendor for the next few months, and it is a fair question to ask.

One detail worth knowing because it affects timing: IMDA states that change requests submitted after the deadline will not be processed until after EDGE has launched.

What should an operator do between now and October?

Five things, in the order I would do them.

1. If a project is genuinely ready, run it under the current schemes. They remain live, and EDGE’s support levels by activity are not yet published. A defined grant today beats an undefined one in two months.
2. Ask your vendor two questions in writing. Which solution category are you registered under, and has your Flexi-CR been submitted? The answers tell you whether their package will be stable through the transition.
3. Get quotes broken down now. Base package, licences, implementation man-days, training, data migration. That is the shape the Package Builder will force anyway, and it is the shape that makes two vendors comparable.
4. Budget by activity, not by scheme. EDGE is being built around what you are doing — capability building, digitalisation, going overseas — rather than which grant you qualified for. Plan next year’s spend the same way.
5. Do not carry old percentages into new plans. Whatever support rate you received under PSG, treat it as unconfirmed until EnterpriseSG publishes EDGE’s rates.

It is also worth remembering why any of this exists. In the same speech, the Food Services Productivity Report commissioned by EnterpriseSG and the Singapore Productivity Centre was cited for a striking finding: top F&B performers generate close to three times more sales per man-hour than those at the bottom. The five practices those top performers shared were digitalisation and automation, strategic menu design, streamlined workflows and space layouts, outsourcing labour-intensive preparation, and effective workforce management.

A grant is a discount on the first of those. It is not the reason to do it. The operators I have watched get real value out of PSG over the years are the ones who had already decided the system was worth buying, and treated the funding as a way to bring the decision forward by a quarter. That logic does not change under EDGE, and it is the right way to approach the next two months: decide what the business needs, then work out which scheme is open when you are ready to sign.

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