In recent months, I’ve noticed a troubling trend in Singapore: long-standing businesses are shuttering their doors. These aren’t the fly-by-night cafes or the overly ambitious start-ups that burn bright for a year before disappearing. These are businesses that have weathered storms, survived recessions, and even pulled through the pandemic.
And yet, they are closing now.
At first, I couldn’t wrap my head around it. The pandemic was the hardest period for any business, right? If they managed to survive that, shouldn’t the road ahead — as the economy “recovers” — be smoother? But the more I looked into it, the clearer it became: what we are seeing today isn’t recovery. It’s the aftermath.
Survival Then, Struggle Now
During COVID-19, many businesses were kept alive not because they were thriving, but because they were supported. The Singapore government rolled out a wide range of schemes: wage support, rental relief, and easy access to loans. These were lifelines — and rightly so, because no business could have survived without them when foot traffic disappeared overnight.
But lifelines come with strings. The loans, in particular, are now due. And here’s the kicker: they’re not just due, they’re heavier. Interest rates have risen sharply in the past two years. Inflation has driven up costs. And rentals — the perennial bane of Singapore businesses — have gone up significantly.
What many businesses are experiencing today is not the pain of the pandemic itself, but the delayed blow of the debts they took on to survive it.
The Camel’s Back
For some, the breaking point was rent. Fluff Bakery, a well-loved Muslim-owned business known for its cupcakes and pastries, announced its closure after over a decade of operations. They had survived the pandemic, adapted, and even expanded. But rising operating costs and rental hikes finally tipped the scale.
And they are not alone. In the past year, we’ve seen established restaurants, heritage shops, and household names disappear from our landscape. It feels almost surreal — businesses that carried us through the dark days of COVID-19 now being buried by the weight of “recovery.”
It makes you wonder: are we really on the road to recovery, or has the recession for Singapore only just begun?
A Global Pattern
To be fair, Singapore isn’t unique. Around the world, businesses are facing the same delayed crisis. In the United States, for example, many small businesses that relied on the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans are now struggling to repay them amid higher interest rates and inflation. In the UK, pubs and restaurants that survived multiple lockdowns are closing in record numbers because energy bills and rent costs have skyrocketed.
Germany, too, has seen a surge in insolvencies in 2023–2024, as companies that held on during the pandemic could no longer sustain themselves under the weight of energy costs, wage pressures, and credit repayments.
In other words, this is not a Singapore-only story. It’s a global aftershock of the pandemic — the “long tail” of economic pain that didn’t disappear the moment vaccines rolled out.
The Illusion of Stability
What the pandemic did was create an illusion of stability. Governments worldwide opened their wallets to prevent mass unemployment and social unrest. It was necessary, but it also meant many businesses that might otherwise have folded were kept alive artificially.
Fast forward to today, and those businesses are paying the price. Not because they were weak, but because they were stretched too thin. They survived on borrowed time — quite literally borrowed, in the form of loans.
And when the bills come due, survival becomes much harder in a world where costs keep climbing.
Lessons for the Future
So what can we learn from this? Because pandemics and global crises are not once-in-a-lifetime events anymore. If COVID-19 taught us anything, it’s that we must prepare for the next big disruption.
For businesses, the key lesson is this: be cautious with credit. Loans may keep you afloat in the short term, but they can weigh you down for years after. If survival during a crisis means mortgaging your future beyond recovery, then it may not be true survival at all.
The next time — and there will be a next time — businesses must balance immediate survival with long-term sustainability. Watching your credit lines, borrowing only what you can reasonably repay, and finding ways to adapt your model without overleveraging could mean the difference between thriving post-crisis or becoming another casualty years later.
It’s also a call for society to rethink how we support businesses. Relief measures are necessary, but so is helping businesses restructure and innovate so they emerge stronger, not just propped up temporarily.
A Reflection
There is a Malay saying: bagai telur di hujung tanduk — like an egg at the tip of a horn. It describes something precarious, a fragile balance that could topple at any moment. That’s what many businesses look like right now: balancing on the edge, fragile and uncertain.
But perhaps another proverb fits even better: tanya jauhari mengenal manikam — only a jeweller knows a gemstone. It means that only those with true insight can recognise real value.
In the rush to celebrate growth and “recovery,” we must not forget to look closely at what’s happening on the ground. The value of these businesses isn’t just in their balance sheets. It’s in the livelihoods they sustain, the communities they serve, the history they carry.
If we, as a society, can see that clearly, then maybe we can build an economy where businesses don’t just survive crises temporarily, but emerge from them truly resilient — gems, not eggs on a horn.
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