Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Singapore will be able to tap on a new $17 million government scheme to boost energy efficiency.

Called the SME Energy Efficiency Initiative and developed by Spring Singapore, it aims to help 300 SMEs to achieve at least 10 per cent savings over the next three years.

The scheme will cover four areas: energy audit, energy monitoring systems, energy efficiency projection implementation and energy efficiency thought leadership.

This was announced by Mr S Iswaran, Minister in the Prime Minister's Office, on Wednesday, at the Standards eXchange on Resource Efficiency event at Resorts World Sentosa.

Mr Iswaran also announced that the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) will be setting up a regional office here in September for an initial two years. This will be the ISO's first regional office outside its Geneva headquarters.