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- Government announces fund to help SMEs
Government announces fund to help SMEs
An £8m fund to boost the productivity and performance.
26 Jun 2018, 1 min read
Unveiled in a speech at the CBI's MSB Business Insight Conference, the fund will be run by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy in partnership with Innovate UK. It will help businesses, charities, trade bodies and public sector organisations support small businesses in adopting tried and test technologies and management techniques. Funded projects will then be evaluated for effectiveness to help inform future policies.
The government states that the new fund will help more small businesses adopt technologies to unlock £100 billion of untapped benefit to our economy. The fund forms part of the government’s Industrial Strategy - 'building an environment that makes Britain the best place in the world to do business'.
Put simply, UK businesses must do more to improve their productivity to get themselves match fit to compete globally in the years ahead. Low uptake of the nuts and bolts technologies of today is a key feature of the productivity puzzle that can, and must, be tackled.— Matthew Fell, CBI UK Chief Policy Director
UK business technology adoption levels are close to the EU average but far behind the front runners, lagging nearly a decade behind the Danes.
The new Industrial Strategy can be the perfect vehicle to get to grips with this missing piece of the jigsaw.