Expanding into a new overseas market is expensive and uncertain — which is exactly why so many Singapore SMEs put it off. What far fewer owners realise is that the government will co-fund a large slice of the digital side of that expansion: the localised website, the international SEO, the overseas ad campaign that actually wins you customers in the new market.
The scheme is the Market Readiness Assistance (MRA) grant, and from 1 April 2026 the support level for SMEs rose to up to 70%. If you’re thinking about selling into Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, or further afield, this is one of the most useful — and most underused — pieces of funding available. Here’s how the digital part works, what actually qualifies, and the one rule that decides whether your claim gets paid.
The grant, in one paragraph
MRA is Enterprise Singapore’s scheme for helping SMEs break into new overseas markets. It’s structured around three pillars — overseas market promotion, business development, and market set-up — capped at S$100,000 per market in total. The pillar that matters for digital work is Overseas Market Promotion, which carries a sub-cap of around S$20,000 per market and now attracts up to 70% co-funding for eligible SMEs. That’s the bucket your overseas digital marketing is claimed under.
What digital work you can actually claim
This is the part most owners don’t know is even on the table. Under the promotion pillar, the digital activities that typically qualify include:
- International SEO and SEM — optimising your site to rank in the target market’s search engines and language, plus paid search campaigns (Google Ads, LinkedIn, or the local equivalent) to generate leads there.
- Website and content localisation — adapting your website, landing pages, and marketing content for the new market: language, messaging, and cultural fit, not just a copy-paste translation.
- Region-specific social media marketing — building and running campaigns on the platforms that actually matter in that market, which may not be the ones you use at home.
- E-commerce listing and setup — listing or subscription costs for global e-commerce platforms with international reach, and tailoring an online store for the target market.
- Localised landing pages and UX — professional optimisation of the pages your overseas campaigns drive traffic to, when they’re part of the market-entry campaign.
In other words: most of what it takes to be found and chosen by customers in a new country can be co-funded.
The 2026 twist: getting cited by AI in your new market
Here’s a forward-looking angle worth building into any application. Ranking on Google is now only half the battle — increasingly, buyers in a new market ask AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity to recommend a provider, and being the business those tools cite is the new front page. The smart version of an overseas promotion scope in 2026 moves beyond keywords toward “citable authority”: creating market-specific, genuinely useful content that establishes you as the credible answer in that region.
That’s essentially Generative Engine Optimisation aimed at a new market — and it can sit inside the promotion pillar, funded at up to 70%. For a business with no brand recognition abroad, it’s one of the most cost-effective ways to get discovered.
The one rule that makes or breaks your claim
Now the honest, important part — the thing that gets claims rejected. The work has to be genuinely tied to entering that specific market. A general refresh of your corporate website does not qualify. Digital marketing is eligible only when it’s clearly built for the market you’re entering.
The sharpest expression of this: assessors expect evidence of new content created and adapted to local market preferences. Simply translating your existing Singapore-centric website into another language is often rejected. So:
- A general website redesign “to look more modern” → not claimable.
- A Vietnam-specific localised site, Vietnamese-language SEO, and a Vietnam-targeted ad campaign, scoped as one market-entry promotion project → claimable.
Scope it as market-specific from the start, and keep the deliverables mapped to that market, and you’re on solid ground.
What it’s worth
The maths is straightforward. Within the roughly S$20,000 promotion-pillar cap, at 70% support, a S$20,000 overseas digital campaign would see about S$14,000 reimbursed — leaving roughly S$6,000 of net cost to put a proper, localised digital push behind a new market. Across the full S$100,000 per-market cap, you can layer promotion with business development and set-up activities for a much larger market-entry programme.
One thing to plan around: MRA is reimbursement-based. You pay your vendor first and claim back afterwards — there’s no advance funding — and reimbursement comes only after a complete, documented claim.
Don’t trip the application
A few rules sink more applications than anything else, and they’re all avoidable:
- Apply before you commit. If you’ve signed the contract, paid the vendor, or started the work before submitting, it’s treated as a retrospective application and rejected. The application comes first, always.
- One activity, one market per application, with each project running no longer than 12 months.
- Use a vendor who can produce audit-ready paperwork — detailed invoices, proof of completion, and deliverables that match the approved proposal. If the documentation doesn’t hold up, the claim gets stuck at the end.
What’s changing in 2026 — plan for it
Three moving parts are worth knowing before you build a plan. The 70% SME support rate runs from 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2029. From the second half of 2026, the “new to market” restriction is being relaxed, so you’ll be able to use the grant to scale in markets where you already have a small presence. And in the same window, MRA is being merged with PSG and EDG into a single consolidated grant called EDGE, with a combined annual limit per company. None of this changes the core opportunity — it just means timing your application well is worth it.
(As with any government scheme, this is general information rather than grant or tax advice, and the rules are mid-transition right now — confirm the live eligibility for your specific scope with Enterprise Singapore before you commit.)
Where Oasis Web Asia comes in
This is squarely the work we do. We build the localised websites, landing pages, international SEO, and AI-search visibility that an overseas push actually needs — and we scope it as market-specific from day one, so it qualifies, with the documentation and deliverables an MRA claim requires. It’s the kind of web development Singapore SMEs can lean on to enter a new market without carrying the full cost themselves. We’ll also flag the sequence that protects your claim: get the scope and quotation right, apply before anything is signed, then build.
If you’re eyeing a new overseas market and want the digital side done in a way you can co-fund, that’s exactly the conversation we like to have.
Start a conversation → — get a free consultation with our Singapore-based team.