Recently, OneSME, a cross-border digital trade platform for SMEs in Singapore and China, was launched in order to facilitate trade more easily between SMEs of the two nations.
OneSME will connect business-to-business (B2B) platforms in the two countries to help local SMEs expand their overseas reach and tap significant demand from Chinese SMEs for Singapore products.
Developed and operated by OneConnect Financial Technology (Singapore), the fintech associate of China’s Ping An Group, and supported by the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), OneSME was launched by Sim Ann, Senior Minister of State for Communications and Information and National Development.
This new platform comes at the right time as SMEs around the world are struggling to stay afloat amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Even now, when the threat of the coronavirus is subsiding, SMEs remain under threat as the global recovery remains slow and businesses are being forced to operate at partial capacity for health and safety reasons.
Chinese SMEs are keen to purchase B2B products from Singapore, according to a survey conducted in July with more than 2,100 Chinese SMEs on OneConnect’s YiQiYe SME platform.
The survey found that up to 93 percent of respondents who are in charge of procurement intend to purchase from outside China. Of these respondents looking to buy from overseas suppliers, 85 per cent ranked Singapore their top overseas procurement choice.
OneSME (previously termed as “Asian SME Hub”) is one of the initiatives under the Singapore-China (Shenzhen) Smart City Initiative (SCI) where eight memorandums of understanding (MOUs) were signed during its first Joint Implementation Committee (JIC) meeting held virtually in June 2020, a move aimed at enabling enterprises and individuals to have greater ease of access to market opportunities in the Greater Bay Area and Southeast Asia via digital connectivity.
