The Ministry of SMEs and Startups (Minister Oh Young-joo) is moving forward with the advancement of production equipment at Technopark, which is working to resolve technological and commercialization difficulties faced by local SMEs through support for joint production equipment.

The Ministry of SMEs and Startups announced on the 4th that it will promote the 2024 Technopark Production Equipment Advancement Support Project to resolve technological and commercialization difficulties caused by a lack of production equipment for local small and medium-sized enterprises.

As an industrial technology complex project operator under the Industrial Technology Complex Act, Technopark has been carrying out local small and medium-sized enterprise support projects of the government and local governments on-site, and has served as a hub for fostering local industries and small and medium-sized enterprises.

The Technopark Production Equipment Advancement Support Project is a project that supports the replacement of aging production equipment owned by Technoparks or the purchase of new equipment so that local small and medium-sized enterprises can jointly utilize it.

Participation in the project is limited to techno parks located outside the metropolitan area. Techno parks wishing to participate in the project must submit an application for participation and an equipment advancement plan linked to key regional industries by February 2.

The Ministry of SMEs and Startups will select about eight techno parks for support by evaluating the 'relevance with regional key industries', 'validity of the advancement plan', and 'activeness of local and private investment' of the equipment advancement plan for each techno park, and plans to support up to 40% (up to KRW 1 billion) of the cost required for equipment advancement per techno park.

Kim Woo-joong, Director of Regional Enterprise Policy at the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, said, “We will resolve the difficulties faced by local SMEs that cannot secure equipment on their own by upgrading the production equipment of Technopark.”He said, “We expect that the Technopark’s function as a regional hub will be strengthened,” and “We ask for the active participation of the Technopark and local governments.”