Recently, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology jointly issued the “Notice on the Pilot work of smes’ Digital transformation Cities” (hereinafter referred to as the “Notice”) to organize the pilot work of smes’ digital transformation cities in three batches from 2023 to 2025.

Since the implementation of the Special Action Plan for Digital Empowerment of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises in 2020, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Ministry of Finance have selected and identified the first batch of 98 digital service providers in 38 sub-sectors, promoted more than 2,000 small and medium-sized enterprises to complete digital transformation, and supported about 430 million yuan of financial funds. However, at present, there are still many pain points and difficulties in the digital transformation of smes that are “unwilling to turn, dare not turn, and will not turn”.

MMS6823 9100-00001-05

MMS6823 9100-00001-05

“Notice” clearly, by carrying out urban pilot, support local governments to implement comprehensive policies, explore the formation of small and medium-sized enterprises digital transformation methods, market mechanisms and typical models, sort out a number of digital transformation segmentation industries, create a number of digital transformation “small lighthouse” enterprises, cultivate a number of high-quality digital service providers, Develop and integrate a number of “small, fast, light and accurate” (miniaturization, fast, lightweight, precision) digital solutions and products, through demonstration drive, look at the sample, copy and promote, guide and promote the majority of small and medium-sized enterprises to accelerate the digital transformation, comprehensively improve the digital level of small and medium-sized enterprises, and promote the deep integration of digital economy and real economy. In 2023, about 30 cities will be selected to carry out pilot work, and the scope of the pilot will be further expanded in the following years according to the implementation.

The “Notice” stressed that the central finance to the pilot cities to give quota incentives, of which the provincial capital city, the plan of separate cities, the corps of the total amount of award compensation funds do not exceed 150 million yuan, other prefecture-level cities, municipalities under the jurisdiction of the county award compensation funds do not exceed 100 million yuan. The Ministry of Finance issued the award and subsidy funds in chunks, which were used by the pilot cities as a whole. In accordance with the principle of “enterprises contribute a little, service providers give a little, and the government makes up a little”, no less than 80% of the award subsidy funds should be arranged to carry out the digital transformation of smes. By supporting the transformed enterprises, they can choose digital service providers to carry out digital transformation, which can be used for software and cloud service expenditures related to digital transformation. Gateways, routes and other necessary data acquisition and transmission equipment expenditure, as well as consulting and diagnosis services expenditure. Enterprises should pay attention to strengthening the depth of transformation, focusing on the transformation of production and manufacturing and other related links.