The Hong Kong government is using various measures to support small and medium-sized enterprises in effectively utilizing AI to enhance their competitiveness.

The Director of the Hong Kong Commerce and Economic Development Bureau, Qiu Ying-wa, stated today (July 8) when responding to questions from legislators in the Legislative Council that the Hong Kong government has been taking a multi-faceted approach to promote the diversified development and upgrading of small and medium-sized enterprises (including import and export businesses) in various industries through measures such as financial support, capacity building, promotion, and market expansion. With the rapid development of technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) in recent years, the government encourages the industry to make good use of technology to meet business needs, reduce operational costs, increase efficiency and market competitiveness. Qiu Ying-wa mentioned that under different plans and measures of various policy bureaus/departments of the government, support is provided to enterprises (including small and medium-sized enterprises) for the application of AI in different business scenarios. In terms of financial support, the "Branding, Upgrading and Domestic Sales Market Development Fund" ("BUD Fund") is one of the measures that the government supports small and medium-sized enterprises in the manufacturing or service industries (including import and export businesses) to develop their brands, upgrade and transform, and expand their marketing to diversify markets, in order to enhance competitiveness. To encourage small and medium-sized enterprises to implement projects with AI elements, the "BUD Fund" began to provide more targeted assistance to enterprises in June 2026, with the guidelines of the fund clearly indicating that project applications that involve AI can be funded, such as creating AI chatbots for business websites or using AI to ensure production lines comply with regulatory standards in target markets. Furthermore, the Digital Transformation Support Pilot Scheme (Pilot Scheme) with a funding of 500 million dollars adopts a matching grant model to assist nearly 8,800 small and medium-sized enterprises in adopting existing basic digital solutions to accelerate their digital transformation. The government will allocate an additional three billion dollars to optimize the Pilot Scheme to encourage small and medium-sized enterprises to apply AI and cybersecurity digital solutions to enhance competitiveness and strengthen information security, and will actively consider including more sectors. The government is currently reviewing the Pilot Scheme to determine the funding model, scope, amount, and implementation details of the new round of the Pilot Scheme, aiming to launch the optimized scheme after consulting the Legislative Council in the second half of 2026. On the other hand, the "SME Access to Funding Unit" ("Funding Unit") established by the government and operated by the Hong Kong Productivity Council (HKPC) assists small and medium-sized enterprises in finding suitable government funding programs and providing capacity building services through one-on-one technology capabilities or business knowledge consultation sessions, seminars, networking events, and large annual events regarding information on technology transformation, digitization, e-commerce, etc. The government has allocated one billion dollars to enhance the services of the "Funding Unit" gradually over five years starting from 2023.