Following is the transcript of remarks by the Commissioner for Innovation and Technology, Ms Rebecca Pun, at a media session at the Central Government Offices today (June 26):

Reporter: To pull up on the Chinese question, could you talk about what kinds of sectors are involved and what are the most common types of IT solutions mentioned in the applications that have been submitted. And you also talked about how the Scheme doesn't guarantee a full grant of subsidy for the applications. So could you tell us a little bit more? Thank you.

Commissioner for Innovation and Technology: Maybe I should talk about the most popular business IT solutions requested (by those enterprises with their applications approved). They are online business, digital customer experience enhancement, online customer services and engagement, remote document management, cloud storage and remote access services, as well as other online/cloud-based business support systems. Those are quite popular requests at the moment. Among the over 1 000 cases that we have approved, they come from the retail sector, the import and export sectors, as well as education and training sectors and services such as tourism. So there are different types of industries covered in the over 1 000 approved cases. As far as the funding request is concerned, as I have explained, we have transparent vetting criteria to ensure that the public money will be put to good use and prudent use of public money. The vetting criteria include the relevance of the proposed project to the applicant's business, the reasonableness of the budget, the reasonableness of the implementation details, the capability of service providers as well as any adverse record of the service providers as known to us. So it is important that we continue to implement the vetting criteria to make sure that the money is well spent in order to support as many enterprises as possible with our budget under the Distance Business Programme. It is obvious that under the epidemic, many more businesses would like to try to conduct the business online in order to maintain their competitiveness. Thank you.

(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)

Ends/Friday, June 26, 2020
Issued at HKT 20:40

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