SINGAPORE: Despite a challenging year in which it had to navigate a volatile external environment and a post-merger transition, Enterprise Singapore said on Thursday (Mar 14) it made "good progress" by assisting 76,000 local firms across different growth stages and business capabilities in 2018.
This covered a range of assistance from "in-depth discussions to generic enquiries", said Chief Executive Officer Png Cheong Boon. About 30,000 firms were engaged by its partners at SME Centres through business advisory and workshops.
AdvertisementThese figures were shared at the agency's year-in-review report, its first after it was formed last year through a merger of SPRING Singapore and IE Singapore.
[h=3]READ: New agency Enterprise Singapore launched to help companies grow, internationalise[/h]Last year, Enterprise Singapore supported 7,000 capability-upgrading projects. When implemented, these projects are estimated to generate S$10.2 billion in value-add to the economy and 10,500 skilled jobs.
It facilitated more overseas projects in 2018, up 25 per cent to 570 projects, with half of these in China and Southeast Asia.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAll of these projects are expected to bring about S$11.1 billion of overseas sales and S$6.1 billion of overseas investments.
More than 1,000 start-ups tapped on its Startup SG Programmes and partners for assistance.
Under the Startup SG Equity, Enterprise Singapore co-invested nearly S$36.5 million in 52 start-ups, catalysing about S$118 million in private investments.
"We have done a lot in our first year as Enterprise Singapore, but it is not without challenges," said Mr Png.
The new Government agency had to "concurrently deal with the changes, transitionary issues and integration matters" arising from the merger, and there were situations where the agency fell short.
"Approvals for grant applications and disbursement were slower in some cases. We might not have responded fast enough to customers' enquiries and we were still unfamiliar with many of our programmes," added Mr Png.
Moving forward, Enterprise Singapore will focus on "three important and mutually-reinforcing priorities" after conducting a review of its strategies.
These include "sharper" approaches to help local firms raise productivity, strengthen innovation and accelerate internationalisation.
Chairman Peter Ong acknowledged that these three areas were not new, but said the agency will be approaching them differently.
When it comes to fostering technology adoption, the agency will focus more on "market-led innovation", where technology solutions are developed based on the opportunities and problems faced by industry players here and in other markets.
"We will focus more on market needs, then we innovate based on that," he said.
On helping more firms to venture abroad and to do so in the earlier stages, Enterprise Singapore said it will invest more efforts to help a broader base of SMEs build necessary capabilities and be connected to support networks in these markets.
Let's block ads! (Why?)
More...