About 89 per cent of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Shanghai have resumed operations as of Monday with 79 per cent of their employees back to work, local authorities have said.
The local authorities said they distributed more than one million masks daily to these SMEs and have facilitated over 20,000 SMEs to purchase masks.
Zhang Jianming, Deputy Director, Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Information, told newsmen that epidemic prevention and control materials, including disinfection products and goggles were provided to more than 100 SMEs in the metropolitan.
“SMEs have been greatly affected by the pandemic. Through the research of SMEs and a survey on 2,622 SMEs in Shanghai, we found the difficulties of SMEs in resuming work.
“And production mainly include the increase of operating costs and the lack of confidence in development,” Zhang said.
He added that Shanghai has introduced a raft of measures to beef up the steady and healthy development of SMEs.
He listed the measures to include a two billion yuan (about 283 million U.S. dollars) financing service for SMEs and a 500,000 yuan award to SMEs related to epidemic prevention and control.
According to the official, commercial banks, including the SPD Bank and the Shanghai branch of Bank of China, plan to allocate a special aid totaling 30 billion yuan to help SMEs cope with the impact of the pandemic.
