The enterprise development agency's chairman, Mr Philip Yeo, believes that despite challenging times, Singapore firms must not lose their long-term focus.

'Singapore companies - particularly SMEs - must look long term and continue to 'grow' in business scope and size, 'glow' profitably and 'globalise' their market presence,' Mr Yeo told reporters at Fusionopolis. 'This will strengthen our competitive advantage, widen our lead against our competitors, and position us well to ride out the storm.'

Despite the gloomy outlook for the world economy, Spring Singapore says the downturn still presents opportunities for promising SMEs to strengthen their global positions and widen their lead over competitors. And to support firms in meeting their objectives, the agency's priorities will be two-fold - helping SMEs to overcome the current economic crisis and building up their capabilities.

'We already have in place existing programmes to help SMEs gain access to financing and strengthen their business capabilities, and will continue to leverage on them to help as many SMEs as we can to grow and stay ahead,' said Mr Yeo.

Besides being the lead agency that helped introduce improvements to government-backed loans, Spring Singapore is behind the new Financial Facilitator Programme, set up to provide free financial advice and loan facilitation to SMEs through Enterprise Development Centres and the EnterpriseOne Business Information Services.

Since improvements to the government-backed financing schemes kicked in on Dec 1, more than $265 million worth of loans have been handed out to almost 800 companies. Nearly all SMEs that applied have been successful in getting loans. Aside from financing, Spring has introduced the Building and Upgrading Initiatives for Long-Term Development (Build) programme, a $200 million enhanced capability development package.

The agency aims to support at least 2,000 firms through Build by offsetting up to 70 per cent of qualifying costs for all its existing capability development programmes. These cover a range of areas, including technology innovation, design, branding and business management systems, business leader development, pro-

cess re-engineering, intellectual property management and product development.

And more government assistance for SMEs is in the pipeline. Spring is planning to introduce additional unspecified programmes to run alongside its existing support framework.

'If our SMEs continue to build on their strengths and invest in long-term development, I am confident that we will come out much stronger and more competitive than before,' said Mr Yeo.