LEVELLING THE PLAYING FIELD

2014/9/5

From：Macau Business Daily

Macau Economic Service (DSE) recently announced it will establish a subsidy scheme for small and medium sized enterprise websites in order to help the SMEs get their message out via e-commerce. Although the effect of the scheme will only be evident in the future, there is no doubt that the idea has sparked the interest of SMEs and will also benefit web developers.
Mr. Leong, the owner of a web development company, agrees that the scheme has raised the demand for website creation in the market. He told Business Daily that his company has received some 30 percent increase in enquiries from clients since the government announced the scheme last month.
Mr. Chan, the representative of another company, also said that there has been increased interest, up 20 percent, by potential clients enquiring about the subsidy scheme.
These clients, according to Mr. Chan, are from different industries although he has noticed that a significant proportion are trading companies that want to introduce their products online.
The application period of the subsidy scheme will run from September 15 to March 16 and is open to all interested SMEs. Successful applicants, according to the scheme, will be granted a 70 percent subsidy of the cost – or up to a maximum 14,000 patacas (US$1,750) – to launch their own first website. Another maximum subsidy of 6,000 patacas will be offered for the maintenance of websites during the first three years of its operation.
For those SMEs that already have their websites up and running but would like to improve them a subsidy of up to 5,000 patacas is available.
Meanwhile, Mr. Lao’s technology company, which runs both software and website developments, has set up a dedicated team to work for successful scheme beneficiaries.
“Our company usually does tailor-made websites for our clients. We design and write different systems for different companies to meet their needs,” he said.
He indicated, however, that the cost is quite expensive. He also said that the dedicated team would create a template that could be applied to most simple, informative websites, since the SMEs are unlikely to want to spend too much over and above the government subsidy.
These owners and representative said that a budget of around 10,000 to 20,000 patacas may only build a simple website that contains only informative text about the client’s products and company.
If clients are interested in upgrading the functions of their websites, such as creating a membership system, online orders or animation, the cost will jump to between 40,000 and 100,000 patacas.

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