AI-powered BizSG portal helps firms find government grants

Caption language: en · Fetched: 2026-09-12

Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry Yol Yed Lang says innovation is a pathway to more partnerships among Singapore and China companies. Speaking at this year's Singapore China Business Forum, she adds that both countries must innovate continuously when facing changes due to AI and demographic shifts. With Singapore taking on the ASEAN chairmanship next year, SMS Lo says it will be a good time for China firms to explore business opportunities in Southeast Asia. She adds that chambers of commerce and forums like this can play an important role in establishing business relations. China's ambassador to Singapore echoed her sentiments. Earlier this week, SMS Low also announced a new one-stop AI powered portal, and it's to help businesses find and apply for government grants and support schemes called BIS SG.

It uses artificial intelligence to make recommendations based on a company's profile and business plans. It can also help calculate tariffs formemes looking to expand overseas and point out relevant free trade agreements. Now the BIS SG portal is going live at the end of this month following a nearly one-year long pilot. Now joining me for a closer look at the initiative is executive director Audrey Lok from the team behind the BIS SG portal at Enterprise Singapore. Also with us is S. Mahendran a CEO of catering solutions who took part in that pilot. Welcome to you both Audrey first to you. Um there's already a lot of information out there on a government grants and services which are parked online. So what gaps does BISG plug um to help businesses? >> Yeah, thanks Chill for having me. Um you're absolutely right.

There's a lot of information out there. In fact, one of the feedback we get from businesses is they are very overwhelmed by the information that's coming through. And so, one of the things that B SG tries to do is to try to streamline that searching process, >> allow them to uh explain their situation in their own words and then the recommener will recommend them the relevant support. >> But in fact, BSG's ambition is more than just to help companies find information, search grants. Um, actually, we have ambitions also to look at using AI to help to make transactions less painful.

M >> yeah and if I want to if I take back uh if I look at some of the reports that are coming through last year the Singapore Chinese chamber of commerce actually ran a survey and 40% of businesses said that they found it difficult to find government support to suit their immediate need. >> So there is clearly a mismatch in information and how they can apply it. So at the end of the day BIS SG tries to do three things. >> One to personalize information to the firm in the way they need it. >> Two to be a trusted source of information. entry to give them uh confidence to take the next step. >> All right. Well, Mah, you just heard the three aims of the project and you were actually part of the pilot project which uh took a year. Um how did you use uh BIS SG and was it easy? Was it hard?

Did it actually point to something that you otherwise may have missed? >> So I had the privilege of using the system um for the first time and 2 minutes into the system I thought this was going to be a game changer. Um it was incredibly easy to use. It was easy to maneuver and something that stood out for me was the tariff calculator. So you know um currently the business environment uh Singapore being the trade hub um we need to know what tariffs are like. Um we need to have this information at our fingertips and going through this portal it just made things so much easier.

All I had to put in is the origin origin and the destination and it could tell me what the tariffs were, the different FTAs that were available, the free trade agreements between the countries that were available and beyond that we also had information such as the export data for a certain product, >> right? So, which made um decision-m skills much easier for businesses. I I think this is going to be just uh like I said game changer for the industry. >> Okay. Uh good to hear that. Um but uh you know the portal uh Audrey is powered by AI. Um it's focus is to make recommendations as we have just heard over there. Um is the idea to do away with human advisers completely? >> Oh not at all. So business SG will sit within a larger support ecosystem that already exists for companies today.

So first we have theme centers and then we have many trade associations that also run programs to help companies. I think the the the problem we're trying to uh address here is 90% of companies that walk into our SM centers start off asking about grants, >> right? [laughter] >> In fact, we think and we hope that the BIS SG portal will be able to answer those questions and that will leave time for the business advisor to really talk through questions and business strategies that really matter to the company, >> right? To to take it deeper and a step further than Yes. Okay. Understand. And Mahan, back to you. Uh many businesses as we talked about already have all this information online perhaps even too much as as Audrey was saying.

Um was the support from trade associations still valuable to you uh at this point and what difference did that make to you? >> Right. Yeah. Trade associations they make a huge difference when you're looking for this sort of support right u and in this case uh if I were to marry both um the BIS SG and the trade associations uh roles together. Yeah. Um, from the demo I I saw certain information that were quite difficult for me to find if I was to use the traditional web search engines or the agency's websites um which were readily available and gave me step-by-step um instructions on what the next step should be for the business, right? I could then take this information and go to the business advisers at the trade association and they can put me in touch with the relevant um right >> uh representatives overseas.

So for example my my pursuit for internationalization uh the MRA grant uh I wanted to seek some support from the overseas counterpart so they could help me and put me in touch with this person. So the human touch is still uh very much required. >> Right. So, so they they they kind of um have different roles, so to speak. >> They complement each other. >> Complimentary roles. Yes. Not cannibalizing roles. Um I have a final question, but it's to both of you. Um >> you haven't launched it yet, but when you do launch it, um and it has some sort of traction and success, how will um the experience of uh seeking government support look different from businesses uh maybe a year or two down the road? Um how about you start first?

Yeah, I think in the past businesses had to first understand what the government policies were about, what the grant policies and the grant requirements were about. We hope that in future we flip that around. So you don't have to understand us. Tell us what you want to do. >> Uh and we will give you the solution and the support to meet your needs. >> Yeah. >> So in in a year's time you expect that to be scaled perhaps >> scaled scaled to 270,000 companies hopefully. uh and not just that also to help to link them up with other physical channels and partners we have in the ecosystem. This includes SM centers as well as the trade associations. >> Okay. So um what about you Mahan? If if you were to uh see two years down the road you know you've already said this is a gamecher what would that look like on the next level?

>> So I'm not sure if um Audrey will agree with me but um I think I see this differently. I see I see that all this while businesses have been looking up for the various supports and the grants and this has always been a one-way road. It's a one-way channel, right? >> And now with AI where all these prompts that are going into the database, there's going to be visibility on the other end as well, right? It's it's it's a dedicated portal. So Audrey and her team may have visibility on the questions that are going to come up by the businesses, right? And they can filter this by what are the frequently asked questions or what are the business needs now. >> So let's now tailor the solutions according to the the the high volume questions that are coming in. So I think that is a two-way channel and we call this the loop.

So we're closing the loop now. So I think this is how it's going to change uh the way that we transact. >> Fascinating. And I I wish you all the best for the launch and for your business as well. >> Thank you so much both of you for joining us. I've been uh uh joined by Miss Audrey Lok, executive director at Enterprise SG and Mr. S. Mahentteran, CEO of Catering Solutions.