SPEECH BY MR LEE YI SHYAN MINISTER OF STATE FOR TRADE AND INDUSTRY AT THE A*STAR GET-UP SEMINAR, MATRIX AUDITORIUM BIOPOLIS ON TUESDAY, 15 APRIL 2008 AT 3:15 PM

Mr Lim Chuan Poh, Chairman, A*STAR

Distinguished guests,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Good afternoon. I am glad to join you here at A*STAR’s Growing Enterprises with Technology Upgrade (GET-UP) Seminar. It is very encouraging to see many companies at this session.

GET- UP and its achievements

For Singapore to compete in the knowledge-based economy, we need a whole hosts of globally competitive and technology savvy enterprises.

By harnessing many existing schemes from EDB, SPRING Singapore, International Enterprise Singapore and the technical capabilities of A*STAR Research Institutes, our SMEs can hope to boost their competitiveness in financial, human resource and technological capabilities.

Get-up program was conceived in 2003 to help SMEs exploit technology to build on new competitiveness. Currently, there are three technical assistance schemes available under the GET-UP programme - namely, the Operation & Technology Road mapping, Technical Advisor and Secondment of Research Scientists and Engineers (T-UP).

To date, A*STAR has helped 90 companies to develop a total of 104 operation and technology roadmaps. A total of 60 Technical Advisors have also provided consultancy services to 57 companies, with their services renewed many times.

As for the T-UP scheme, it is the most popular scheme among the three technical assistance schemes. In fact, today we will see another 27 researchers from respective A*STAR research institutes starting their secondment with 22 local enterprises on their R&D programmes. In total, A*STAR has seconded 172 RSEs to 121 companies, of which 18 have been employed by their companies after the end of their secondment period.

For the past 5 years, the GET-UP team has visited 1,000 local enterprises to promote GET-UP, and 223 companies have benefited from this initiative so far. In fact, some S$3 million grants have been extended to 34 promising local enterprises under GET-UP.

A*STAR FACILITY SHARING PROGRAMME (A*FSP)

To further enrich the GET-UP program, I am pleased to officially launch the A*STAR Facility Sharing Programme.

Under this program, technology-intensive SMEs can now leverage on more than 200 specialized and sophisticated pieces of lab equipment in six A*STAR research institutes. The 6 participating research institutes are : the Data Storage Institute, Institute for Infocomm Research, Institute of Chemical & Engineering Sciences, Institute of Materials Research & Engineering, Institute of Microelectronics and the Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology.

With this program, SMEs will be able to perform a number of R&D procedures, such as failure analysis, product characterization, prototyping and solution formulation. The research institutes will also provide training and certification to equip users with the necessary skills to operate the equipment.

Conclusion

The government is committed to promote R&D in Singapore. In our current 5-year plan called the Science & Technology Plan 2010 (STP2010), MTI is committing S$7.5 billion to sustain innovation-driven growth through economic-oriented research and development (R&D), which supports key industry clusters. We hope to increase national spending in R&D to 3 percent of GDP by 2010.The enhanced GET-UP program we discussed today complements our R&D strategy. It is an important channel through which SMEs can also exploit technologies to create intellectual properties and growth opportunities. I thank all the parties involved for working together to derive greater benefits from our R&D investments and infrastructure. I wish you all a fun and rewarding journey ahead.

Thank you.