MOEA inspires local companies for promoting e-commerce

The Ministry of Economic Affairs made special award in order to inspire local companies to promote e-commerce. Even though an award-giving ceremony took place in Taipei on December 16 the award perspective based on a long-term platform and provides many opportunities for local businesses. There are dozen of local companies were honoured by this award and showed good results in the field of e-commerce after joining a government-sponsored "Bridging the Digital Divide among SMEs Project".

This project was initiated by the Small and Medium Enterprise Administration in 2005. And according to the MOEA it aimed to encourage owners of small and medium business in Taiwan into the modern and sophisticated e-commerce world. The implementation of this project caused the additional efforts. So the administration has commissioned the Information Service Industry Association. The same time the association cooperated with 21 municipal computer industry associations and more than 1000 information service providers. Those efforts were taken for advising remotely-located businesses on how to advertise themselves on the Internet. This program has the pre-phase period during which it was running.

This period of time took four years. After that the program has helped nearly ten thousands domestic SME connected to the Internet through speedy broadband lines and set up e-commerce websites. It is noted that the program helped in generation of NT $2.2 billion in business totally. Now the time for the second phase came. It will long from 2008 till 2011 and will focus on creating more "digital clusters'" among micro businesses. What digital clusters is need for? They unite 10 or more micro businesses in the vicinity of a community. And together those businesses own and cooperate a shared website to promote their products and services in the cyber market.