Dedicated Fund on Branding, Upgrading and Domestic Sales (BUD Fund)
To help Hong Kong enterprises capture the opportunities arising from the National 12th Five-Year Plan, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government (the Government) set up a "Dedicated Fund on Branding, Upgrading and Domestic Sales" (the BUD Fund) of HK$1 billion in June 2012 to assist Hong Kong enterprises in exploring and developing the Mainland market through developing brands, upgrading and restructuring their operations and promoting domestic sales in the Mainland.
Since 2018, the Government has injected a total of HK$6 billion into the BUD Fund, and launched rounds of enhancement measures to better support local enterprises in exploring more diversified markets and capturing the opportunities brought by the Mainland's National 14th Five-Year Plan. Currently, the geographical coverageNote of the funding support has been extended to include the Mainland (the Mainland Programme) and other economies with which Hong Kong has signed Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) and/or Investment Promotion and Protection Agreements (IPPAs) (the FTA and IPPA Programme).
To strengthen the support to enterprises in enhancing their competitiveness and developing diversified markets, the cumulative funding ceiling per enterprise under the BUD Fund has been increased to HK$7,000,000 and the maximum number of approved projects per enterprise has been increased to 70 with effect from 7 November 2022.
To enable more enterprises to make use of the funding to develop their business, "Easy BUD" was launched on 16 June 2023 to expedite the processing of applications involving designated measures with a funding amount of HK$100,000 or below. Under "Easy BUD", the application form, the requirements for supporting documents and the vetting arrangements have been simplified. The processing time of "Easy BUD" applications has also been significantly reduced by half to completion within 30 working days as compared with the 60-working-day performance pledge for other applications of the BUD Fund.
To assist enterprises to develop the Mainland market through electronic commerce (e-commerce) business, "E-commerce Easy" was launched on 15 July 2024. Under "E-commerce Easy", enterprises can make use of HK$1 million funding flexibly within the cumulative funding ceiling of HK$7 million per enterprise to implement e-commerce projects for developing their businesses in the Mainland.
For details of the BUD Fund, please visit its website (https://www.bud.hkpc.org/en).
Note: The geographical coverage of the BUD Fund includes 39 economies, namely the Mainland, New Zealand, the four member states of the European Free Trade Association (i.e. Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland), Chile, Macao, the ten member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (comprising Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam), Georgia, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgo-Luxembourg Economic Union, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Kuwait, Mexico, the Netherlands, Sweden, Türkiye, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom.