SME Development Fund

Purpose

The purpose of the SME development fund is to improve the competitiveness of SMEs in general or a certain industry. This program is suitable for non-profit organisations and it has a ceiling of 5 million for each project. The fund can be used on the followings:

• Additional Manpower
• Additional Equipment
• Expense for consumables
• Expenses for production and promotion.
• Travelling Expense
• External audit fees
• Patent registration fee.

There are some restrictions in spending the funds and they are:

• Rental
• Office or venue renovation
• Electricity and water bill
• Entertainment expenses

Eligibility for application

If your business is a company limited by guarantee and the company intends to have central business management and operation in Hong Kong, you are eligible for the application.

Case Study / Example of using the SME Development Fund

While Get Started HK is a company limited by shares, I will use our company as an example how we improve the Hong Kong Business Registration Industry in the past few years.

Hong Kong is a very popular city for offshore company formation. Not only is it an easy gateway to enter into the China market, offshore tax rate is 0%.  There are more than 1.4 millions of companies registered in Hong Kong.

Since there is such a high demand for Hong Kong company setup, many non-HK based agents try to offer similar service. Most of them are from Singapore, Dubai, France, Italy or even Mainland China. The problem of these non-Hong Kong based or non-Hong Kong owned agents is that they are not familiar with the rules and regulations in Hong Kong. They don’t have an in-house CPA or an in-house Chartered Secretary. They simply hire a filing clerk in Hong Kong.

Since Get Started HK is the leading firm in Hong Kong, we don’t want these (non-trained) foreign owned firms to destroy the reputation of the Hong Kong business registration industry. To improve the overall customers’ experience, our Chief Accountant (Hong Kong practising CPA) Terry Tsao has arranged seminars and lessons on a quarterly basis. Seminars include information of the Companies Ordinance, Inland Revenue Ordinance, labour law, insurance law, etc.

This type of activities are most likely to be approved by the Authority since the objective is to improve the competitiveness of SMEs of the Hong Kong business registration industry.  If you have similar ideas in improving a particular industry, you can submit an application to the SME development fund to build a better Hong Kong.

For those who want to know about how to choose a good company formation agent in Hong Kong, you can refer to our blog – Chapter 7 How To Choose a Reputable Licensed Agency.  If you are ready to start a business registration in Hong Kong, you can also contact our Hong Kong incorporation team at info@getstarted.hk