The SME Export Marketing Fund is gone: is there still government funding for a website in 2026?

Search for the SME Export Marketing Fund and you will still land on pages telling you to apply. Those pages are out of date.

The short version: the EMF no longer exists

The Trade and Industry Department's own page states it plainly:

「中小企業市場推廣基金」已於2026年7月1日合併至「BUD專項基金」 — The SME Export Marketing Fund was consolidated into the BUD Fund on 1 July 2026.

(Source: Trade and Industry Department — BUD Fund)

The fund's key information page adds that only applications for qualifying activities completed on or before 30 June 2026 would be processed. Reimbursement claims were due within 60 calendar days of completion, so the last possible submission was around the end of August 2026.

In other words: you can no longer apply for the EMF. If someone is still pointing you at it for website funding, their information is stale.

So which fund is running now?

The BUD Fund — the Dedicated Fund on Branding, Upgrading and Domestic Sales. Every figure below comes from government pages. Amounts change, so check the TID site yourself before you rely on any of them:

• Matching basis: government funds up to 50% of approved project expenditure; the enterprise must bear at least 50% in cash
• Cumulative ceiling per enterprise: HK$7,000,000
• Approved projects per enterprise: up to 70
• Geographic coverage: 48 economies, including the Mainland, the ten ASEAN countries, and other FTA/investment-agreement partners
• Easy BUD (申請易): up to HK$150,000 per application, 30 working days processing
• E-commerce Easy (電商易): up to HK$800,000 per application, HK$1,000,000 cumulative per enterprise (counted within the HK$7M)

The part that matters: it funds expansion, not websites

This is the point most write-ups skip, and the one that wastes people's time.

E-commerce Easy covers setting up online shops and placing advertisements on third-party sales platforms, building or improving mobile applications, and adding e-payment to a company website — all in service of expanding into the Mainland and the ten ASEAN markets (source: government press release).

The old EMF drew the same line: the corporate websites it could fund were those set up for export promotion, "mainly targeting markets outside Hong Kong."

Put plainly:

• ✅ You are a Hong Kong company moving into the Mainland or ASEAN, and the site or shop is part of that expansion → you may qualify
• ❌ You run a local business and want a better, faster, findable Hong Kong website → that is not what this fund is for

The second case is what most Hong Kong SMEs actually need. If that is you, time spent chasing a grant is time not spent on the site — start instead with what web design actually costs here and build something that works within a budget you control.

Where we stand on this

To be direct: we are not funding consultants and we do not prepare grant applications. We will not tell you we can "get you government funding for a website," because for most local clients that sentence is not true.

What we do is the site itself: our Hong Kong web design service, where a short conversation gets you a preview, SEO and GEO are built in, and the pricing is written down. If you genuinely are expanding into the Mainland or ASEAN and need a site or shop for it, say so when we talk and we will quote that scope — the grant application itself belongs with a specialist consultant or directly with TID.

Check it yourself

Do not take any second-hand source's word for this, including ours — government figures change. The primary sources:

• Trade and Industry Department — BUD Fund
• SME Export Marketing Fund — key information

Figures here reflect the government pages as read on 11 September 2026.