Who Will Receive This Year’s ‘Busan Small Business Person Award’?

Busan City Accepts Nominations for CEOs of Innovative and Advanced Management SMEs Until the 19th

Busan City Hall. Busan City will receive nominations for candidates for the Small and Medium Business Person of the Year award this year.

[Asia Economy Yeongnam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Kim Yong-woo] Who are the candidates for this year's 'Busan Small and Medium Business Person of the Year,' leading the regional economy with successful technological innovation and advanced management systems?

Busan City announced on the 5th that it will accept nominations for the 2020 Busan Small and Medium Business Person of the Year from the 5th to the 19th. This is in response to the rapidly changing economic and industrial paradigms due to the spread of the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19), aiming to accelerate technological innovation and lead the regional economy with advanced management systems and flexible corporate culture.

Nominees must be small and medium business persons who, according to Article 2 of the Framework Act on Small and Medium Enterprises, have their headquarters and factories in the Busan area as of the announcement date and have been managing a small or medium-sized enterprise for more than three years.

The application period is 15 days from the 5th to the 19th. Applications or recommendation letters can be downloaded from the Busan City website and submitted via email or mail. The city will review and verify the nominees and finalize the awardees, planning to hold the award ceremony in July.

The evaluation criteria and scoring are employment creation (30 points), corporate soundness (25 points), business performance (20 points), technological status (15 points), and economic and social contribution (10 points). After document screening and on-site inspection, the selection committee will comprehensively evaluate the businesspersons' management capabilities, growth potential, employment stability, and social contribution to make the final selection.

Awardees will receive a trophy and a certificate of excellence. They will also be granted special benefits such as Busan City’s small and medium enterprise operating and nurturing funds, special credit guarantee support, priority support for dispatch to overseas market development teams and participation in overseas exhibitions, and tax audit deferrals according to Article 11 of the Busan Metropolitan City Tax Audit Operation Rules.

Especially this year, in line with the enforcement of the Special Act to Revitalize Corporate Vitality, companies entering new industries such as artificial intelligence, big data, and autonomous vehicles will be given priority selection if they rank in the top 50% or higher in the evaluation to promote manufacturing innovation and high value-added service industries.

Additionally, to promote equal opportunities socially and economically following the revision of the Act on Support for Female Enterprises, additional evaluation points have been added for fostering female enterprises and creating female employment.

Kim Yoon-il, Director of the Busan City Job Economy Office, said, “In response to the post-COVID era’s non-face-to-face culture and industrial trend changes, we will continuously discover competitive CEOs of small and medium enterprises in various fields who will lead the regional economy as engines of innovative growth.”