Cultural Industries Fund to enhance SMEs support

Leong Heng Teng (center)

The Cultural Industries Fund’s Administrative Committee announced that it will increase the amount of funds given to support small sized enterprises between 2016 and 2018. This information was reported by Leong Heng Teng, president of the committee, during yesterday’s press conference regarding the review of the cultural industries fund from the 2014-2016 period.
“Hopefully, next year, we can focus on small-sized enterprises,” said Leong, who shared that in order to distribute the funds to appropriate candidates in a more prudent way, the committee turned to several scholars from Macau’s higher education institutes to provide advice regarding their future actions.
Davina Chu, a member of the committee, told the media that in the face of the difficulties these enterprises have encountered over the past three years, the committee considered offering them additional help.
She further informed that this supplementary help will be given mostly to applicants consisting of fewer than five people. “In particular for those recreational enterprises located within the city’s communities, we will launch specific funds to help them improve their businesses, as well as to create a special cultural belonging in the community,” said Chu.
“[We will help] to develop recreational projects which have community specialties. […] each community has its own culture and soul.”
Chu informed that aside from supporting small-sized enterprises, the committee will also increase during this period their support of specific fields such as the fashion industry, design, music, film, as well as cultural performance and exhibitions.
Another new measure the committee will adopt in the coming years is the establishment of an awards system. This will give awards to exceptional enterprises which have had a significant role in the cultural industry.
“Awards will also go to those projects which support the cultural and recreational development, or to projects used to train talented people in the creative industry, as well as those that have pushed cross-region cultural exchange,” said Chu.
In 2014, the government launched the fund to support local cultural recreational business. Until the end of last month, the committee awarded MOP128 million to approximately 90 projects.
The total funds amounted to nearly MOP100 million in non-remunerated funds and MOP40 million in interest-free loans.
Over 400 local companies applied for the fund in the past three years. 113 of the applications were approved, although some of the approved applicants eventually returned the funds for a variety of reasons, such as shortage of human resources or issues concerning engineering projects.
As Chu noted, most applicants have been running their businesses successfully, and the small number of failed businesses were unable to continue on account of not being able to extend the lease of their office space.
The president Leong Heng Teng also reported that less than 20 percent of the approved applicants approached the committee to cancel the funds or did not sign an agreement with the committee. Julie Zhu