Page 3389 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 19 August 2009
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I would also like to mention the Chamber of Women in Business. This group provides support and development opportunities for businesswomen in the Canberra region. As the only business association focusing on businesswomen’s needs, the chamber offers members a supportive environment that fosters their business growth. Their women’s business information resource has been made possible by funding from the ACT Office for Women and offers myriad useful information resources for women to plan, grow and then market their businesses in the ACT.
In my electorate of Brindabella I would also like to recognise the group Business Tuggeranong. They are an active, self-funded organisation that does a great job in promoting the Tuggeranong valley as an attractive and viable place to do business. I commend them for this and also for their ongoing work in building valuable networks between a range of stakeholders on the south side, including government departments, community organisations, educational institutions and retail businesses.
We continue to be proud of the way our business sector has evolved and how the ACT government’s relationship with business has also evolved. Recently, through the ACT budget, we have seen this government reinvest strongly in key business programs. To name a few, this government has provided an extension to TradeConnect over the next four years. It is broadening the existing Canberra.net program and supporting the introduction of the CollabIT program in partnership with the AIIA. We are supporting the international student ambassadors program as an important part of the government’s trade and export development initiative. Further, we have provided further funding to ScreenACT over three years to support local creative industries.
This builds on the year before, when the government also put into place a number of innovation related measures such as the InnovationConnect grants program to support local innovators and provided around $3.5 million for research facilities, which brings with it an additional $30 million in matched funding from the commonwealth. All this translates into new jobs and business demand.
The ACT government, through the business and industry development arm of the Chief Minister’s Department, offers support to micro, small and medium businesses. The business and industry development supports include small business establishment, operation and development, innovation across all business sectors and economic development across the broader capital region.
There are a number of venture capital support and capital partnership programs available to help Canberra businesses to get started and to take up the new opportunities. The Canberra Business Development Fund is a local venture capital fund formed through a joint venture between the ACT government and Australian Capital Ventures Ltd and is designed to provide eligible businesses located in the Canberra region with a source of capital funds through equity investment. Capital Angels is a private investor angel network that provides a forum for investors to proactively support Canberra and the region’s entrepreneurs.
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