Chinese Government Helps Solve Private Enterprises' Funding DifficultiesSpeaking at a lecture on the development of privately-run science & technology enterprises held in Beijing March 11, Zhao Yuhai, deputy director of Innovation Fund Administration Center under the Ministry of Science and Technology, encouraged private high-tech enterprises to apply for innovation funds, so as to solve their funding difficulties in the initial stage.Zhao revealed that because there are too many projects applying for innovation funds, the deadline for accepting and handling such applications will be extended from March 1 to April 1. Small and medium-sized technological enterprises (SMTEs )have seen a favorable development trend in recent years, however, the shortage of funds constitutes an important factor restricting their further development. With a view to solving this problem, the State Council has decided to set up a small and medium enterprise innovation fund to support innovation and start-ups. The fund carries the policy, guidance and non-profit nature. Those supported by the fund are enterprises with high technology and bright market prospect in the initial stage of industrialization. But most of them belong to projects taking great risk and lacking conditions for the inflow of commercial capital. Establishment of the innovation fund will pave the way for them to begin the expansion of industrialization and to have the involvement of commercial capital. The methods for achieving this are as follows: giving aid gratis, providing interest-discount loans, and capital input. Priorities will be given to those projects with innovative capability, high technology, broad market prospect, to highly competitive R&D projects, projects transforming research results into productivity, and to returned overseas Chinese students who start up undertakings. A "three-in-one" system is adopted for the innovation fund, i.e., the integration of government department decision-making and supervision, of expert counsel and guidance, and of the organization and implementation of the management institution. As is reported, innofund was founded on June 25, 1999. Up to January of 2000, innofund had received 3329 applications with a total fund required amounting to about 4 bn yuan. 1089 projects were approved with a total fund running to 816 million yuan. While by the end of 2000, the figures went up to respectively 4974, 872 and 660 million yuan. By PD Online Staff Member Yin Zhili |
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