Singapore and Zhejiang deepen collaboration with joint innovation call programme

SINGAPORE is deepening collaboration with China's eastern Zhejiang province, with a new joint innovation call programme that funds co-innovation projects in areas such as digital economy, sustainability, and smart cities.

This was announced at the 16th Singapore-Zhejiang Economic and Trade Council (SZETC) meeting on Tuesday (Apr 26), alongside the signing of 8 memoranda of understanding in areas such as digital technology, finance and sustainability. 

The newly-launched Singapore-China Yangtze River Delta (Zhejiang) joint innovation call programme is an expansion of an earlier pilot Singapore-Zhejiang joint innovation call in 2021, which connected Singapore companies with Zhejiang enterprises and supported them to jointly innovate and commercialise projects. 

Singapore's Senior Minister of State for Foreign Affairs and National Development Sim Ann said: "Building on the foundation established through the SZETC, we aim to help more Singapore companies capture new opportunities in the province and the greater Yangtze River Delta region, especially in the areas of digital economy and innovation."

The new call, launched by Enterprise Singapore and the Zhejiang Department of Science and Technology, will be open for application in the third quarter of 2022.  

Sim, who co-chaired the meeting with Zhejiang Vice Governor Zhu Congjiu, also noted that new opportunities in digital trade are expected as more digital Zhejiang enterprises are forging partnerships with Singapore players.

This comes after a roundtable between Singapore and Zhejiang government agencies and companies in early 2022. Following the discussion, a consortium of companies from both areas was formed to conduct digital trade financing pilots.

"In the digital economy space, Singapore and Zhejiang can explore joint initiatives in digital trade connectivity such as the digitalisation of trade documents and facilitating secure cross-border data flows. This will bring about efficiency and cost saving in cross border trade," Sim said.

Economic relations between Singapore and Zhejiang remained strong in 2021, with bilateral trade up 18.4 per cent year-on-year at US$6.91 billion and Singapore’s cumulative investments in Zhejiang up by 9.8 per cent at US$8.26 billion, according to Enterprise Singapore figures.

As of 2021, there were more than 1,550 Singapore projects in the China province, and about 280 Zhejiang companies in Singapore.

Singapore's projects in Zhejiang are becoming multifaceted as well, with Singapore companies having established themselves in new areas such as healthcare and innovation, said Sim.