HKPC Offers All-Round Support to SMEs - Serving Hong Kong with Transformation

(Hong Kong, 4 November 2020) The Hong Kong Productivity Council (HKPC) published and tabled at the Legislative Council today its Annual Report 2019-2020, recounting HKPC’s various achievements on advancing Hong Kong reindustrialisation, Industry 4.0 (i4.0) and Enterprise 4.0 (e4.0), which were set to assist SMEs in transformation and upgrading, enabling them to sustain operations and enhance market competitiveness amid the economic adversity.

Themed “Serve Hong Kong with Transformation”, the HKPC Annual Report 2019-2020 highlighted HKPC’s prowess of advanced technologies and innovative services to champion transformation and upgrading of local SMEs, empowering them to resist the economic headwinds. In the reported year, the consolidated service income reached HK$470.4 million; a total of 639 new consultancy projects were undertaken with 55% of new orders coming from SMEs; also, i4.0 related services recorded a 14% income growth.

Mr Willy Lin, Chairman of HKPC said, “HKPC, as always, is the vanguard at challenging times. The ravaging COVID-19 puts us in a prime position to uphold our noble mission of supporting Hong Kong industries with specialised technologies and know-how. Noteworthy were the raft of measures that supported SMEs in need, from remote working tips, informative webinars, funding schemes and technical support, to other timely initiatives, offering a firm hand to help Hong Kong industries overcome the difficult times”.

Within the year, HKPC issued a series of guidebooks on “Hong Kong’s Reindustrialisation and ASEAN’s Opportunities and Limitations in Manufacturing” to assist Hong Kong enterprises in exploring new opportunities. Besides, HKPC continued to be the implementer for several HKSAR Government funding schemes. Among which the Dedicated Fund for Branding, Upgrading and Domestic Sales (BUD Fund), Chinese Medicine Development Fund, Cleaner Production Partnership Programme, Patent Application Grant, Recycling Fund and Retail Technology Adoption Assistance Scheme approved a total of HK$581.1 million within the year.

Mr Mohamed Butt, Executive Director of HKPC said, “In order to enable SMEs to obtain comprehensive information on the Government funding schemes, HKPC held the first-ever ‘SME One Fund Fair’ last year, creating a one-stop platform for local SMEs to acquire funding information, which was undoubtedly an iconic event of the year with a great success of about 12,000 visitors. We also debuted the ‘TechDive’ programme to showcase our ready-to-market inventions, keeping business sectors on top of how these patented technologies can drive economic and social prosperity. We will do more in this vein as it is conducive to generating new business opportunities and making our city more liveable”.

This aside, since 1 January 2020, HKPC has started operating the “SME ReachOut” team to proactively reach out to SMEs through various means, identifying the appropriate funding schemes for them. By end March 2020, the team organised 12 outreach activities and 6 seminars, having handled 1,184 inquires. Inno Space also hosted 134 training sessions, as well as 78 startups and STEM education-related events. 

To download HKPC Annual Report 2019-2020, please visit the HKPC website: www.hkpc.org.

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Mr Mohamed Butt, Executive Director of HKPC, unveils HKPC Annual Report 2019-2020