Tariff worries cast pall over Singapore SMEs' business outlook for rest of 2025: Poll

Rising supplier prices are a worry for Ms Rosemary Chng, founder of vitamins and health supplements business Elixir Botanica.

- Rosalind Ang

It is why she expects the business outlook to remain the same, even though her business is doing well now.

"It's crazy that the suppliers do price adjustments every three months. But I can't do that, as my customers won't like it. This is why it's very critical for survival that I increase my customer base, if I can't increase prices," she said.

Ms Chng is among owners of Singapore small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) who are grappling with global supply chain disruption issues.

An OCBC Bank poll found that against the backdrop of the US tariff negotiations, 57 per cent of more than 1,600 SME business owners surveyed in the second quarter of 2025 expect the outlook for the rest of the year to worsen or remain unchanged. The remaining 43 per cent of the respondents expect an improvement in the second half of 2025, according to findings from OCBC's SME Business Outlook poll released on July 16.

The bank also released the latest OCBC SME Index, which provides a barometer of SME business health and performance by looking at the transactional data of more than 100,000 OCBC Bank SME customers in Singapore with annual sales turnover of up to $30 million.