Distance Business Funding Increased

Funding for the Distance Business Programme under the Anti-epidemic Fund has been increased from $1.5 billion to $1.9 billion, the Innovation & Technology Commission announced today.

It said that the programme, which supports enterprises to adopt information technology solutions to continue business and services during the COVID-19 pandemic, had received an overwhelming response.

During the application period, the programme received a total of 38,572 applications, about 95% of which are from small and medium-sized enterprises.

Of the 28,038 applications processed so far, 25,930 have been approved. Excluding cases in which the enterprises did not accept the application results or provide relevant documents after their applications had been approved, the total funding involved is around $1.4 billion with average approved funding of about $60,000.

The commission said through increasing the programme's financial commitment, the Government hopes to meet the strong demand of applicant enterprises for distance business during the pandemic as far as possible.

The Programme Secretariat aims to notify enterprises of the remaining application results by the end of this month.

  

Enterprises may check the status of and manage their applications via the online system.