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Here's how SPRING Singapore boosted SMEs growth in 2012
It supported over 5,600 businesses last year.
In a release, SPRING Sinagpore said that 2012 has been a challenging year for SMEs.
SPRING Singapore focused and intensified its efforts to help SMEs improve productivity, innovate and upgrade capabilities, so that they could stay competitive in the global market.
For 2012, SPRING supported more than 5,600 SMEs in their productivity and capability upgrading efforts.
SPRING focused its efforts to help SMEs raise their productivity to cope with the tight labour market and rising business costs, and to upgrade their capabilities and leverage on innovation.
This has helped SMEs better differentiate themselves from their competitors and grow in the more competitive global market. More than 5,600 SMEs were supported on productivity improvements, capability upgrading and innovation. This was 19% more than 2011. Of these, 72% of the SMEs who had benefitted were small and micro SMEs.
The sectoral productivity drives in the retail, food services, food manufacturing and furniture sectors continued to gain traction since its launch in 2011. More than 600 SMEs in these sectors have adopted technologies, redesigned workflows, invested in automation, upgraded capabilities and pursued innovations to improve productivity.
The Innovation & Capability Voucher (ICV) was expanded to assist SMEs in four areas of upgrading, namely productivity, innovation, human capital and financial management in April 2012. For the whole year, more than 1,500 SMEs tapped on the vouchers for their upgrading needs. Of these, 95% were small and micro SMEs, while 50% were first-timers.
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