ENG-2013 — Page 133

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Commerce and Industry

telecommunications, biotechnology, precision engineering and green technology. For start- ups, the corporation runs incubation programmes to provide rental, marketing, financial and technical assistance for their critical initial years. The corporation also manages three industrial estates in Tai Po, Yuen Long and Tseung Kwan O. They provide 217 hectares of serviced land to companies using new or improved technology and processes which cannot operate in ordinary multi-storey buildings. The corporation will continue to revitalise the industrial estates to meet the challenges and opportunities brought about by economic re-structuring and to broaden Hong Kong's industry base.

Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute Company Limited (ASTRI)

The publicly-funded ASTRI houses the R&D Centre for Information and Communications. Technologies. It carries out R&D projects to raise the standard of Hong Kong's technology-based industries and to strengthen their growth.

Research and Development Centres

The government's five R&D Centres drive and co-ordinate applied R&D in selected focus areas and promote commercialisation of R&D results and technology transfer. The five centres are:

• Automotive Parts and Accessory Systems R&D Centre (APAS);

• R&D Centre for Information and Communications Technologies under ASTRI;

• Hong Kong Research Institute of Textiles and Apparel;

• Hong Kong R&D Centre for Logistics and Supply Chain Management Enabling Technologies; and

• Nano and Advanced Materials Institute.

Technology Co-operation with the Mainland

The Mainland/Hong Kong Science and Technology Co-operation Committee is a high-level steering committee for the Mainland's Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) and Hong Kong's Commerce and Economic Development Bureau to work together in fostering technology collaboration. Major achievements in 2013 included MOST's approval of four new Partner State Key Laboratories in Hong Kong universities, raising the total number of such laboratories in Hong Kong to 16. Four projects under the 'National Basic Research Program of China' (973 Program) were undertaken by Hong Kong universities directly through their Mainland subsidiaries. MOST designated the Hong Kong Science Park as a Hong Kong National Modern Services Industrialisation (Partner) Base, and the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Youth Innovation Entrepreneurship Base was officially established in Nanshan.

The HKSAR and Guangdong governments jointly run a Guangdong-Hong Kong Technology Co-operation Funding Scheme (TCFS) to encourage collaboration between their universities, research institutions and technology enterprises. As at the end of 2013, the ITF has funded 209 TCFS projects with about $752 million, of which $148 million was for 56 projects jointly funded by the ITF and Guangdong/Shenzhen authorities.

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