The government of the Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) will assist local small and medium enterprises (SME) to come through the difficult situation caused by the global financial crisis through various approaches, said Tam Pak Yuen, the SAR's secretary for economy and finance, in a statement released on Wednesday.

In addition to the credit crunch, local SMEs have already suffered from rising operating costs and shortage of funds, which the SAR government is very concerned about, Tam said in a written statement addressing the questions raised by a local lawmaker of how the government provides assistance to local SMEs.

By expanding financing, tax break, market exploitation, boosting demands, among others, the SAR government will help local SMEs survive the lean years of the crisis, he said.

For the whole of 2008, there were 2,738 new companies incorporated in Macao, with the total registered capital amounting to 413 million patacas (52.3 million U.S. dollars), dropping by 19. 6 percent and 58.5 percent respectively over 2007, while the number of companies in dissolution was 447, involving 529 million patacas (67 million U.S. dollars) in registered capital, according to the latest statistics from the SAR's Statistics and Census Bureau.

The SAR government has already earmarked a sum of 1.5 billion patacas (190 million U.S. dollars) to a business development fund, and raised the limit of interest-free loan to the SMEs to 500,000 patacas (63,291 U.S. dollars), which, together with other measures adopted by the government, will help lower the SMEs' operating costs, Tam said.

In addition, the SAR government was planning to invest a total of 10.2 billion patacas (1.29 billion U.S. dollars) in public projects and launch specific measures to ease Macao's economic difficulties, Tam also said.

(Xinhua News Agency March 5, 2009)