First tranche of wage subsidy under the Employment Support Scheme to receive application from May 25

https://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/202005/12/P2020051200764.htm

Generally speaking, with the exception of ineligible employers (mainly organisations whose employees' salaries are not affected by the epidemic, for example, the HKSAR Government, statutory bodies, sub vented organisations with employees' salaries subsidised by the Government), all employers who have been making MPF contributions for employees (including Master Trust Schemes and Industry Schemes) or who have set up MPF-exempted Occupational Retirement Schemes Ordinance (ORSO) schemes, may apply for ESS.

To further clarify eligibility and to prevent people from applying for wage subsidy by establishing a new company and opening MPF accounts, the MPF accounts of the relevant employers and employees applying for the wage subsidy should have been set up on or before March 31, 2020 (i.e. cannot be backdated to that date or any earlier dates). In other words, employers with the MPF accounts set up on or after April 1, 2020 will not be eligible for the first tranche of wage subsidy.

Employers participating in the ESS must provide an undertaking not to make redundancies during the subsidy period, and to spend all the wage subsidies on paying wages to the employees.