The Hong Kong Productivity Council (HKPC) is calling for the establishment of an education programme to raise awareness of electronic commerce among the small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) sector. The programme, to be organised by the HKPC and IBM China/Hong Kong, will consist of seminars on information technology and other low-cost services. The move came after the HKPC and IBM released the result of an e-commerce survey, which showed only one-ninth of SMEs in Hong Kong are using the Internet to promote business. HKPC executive director Thomas Tang said the result reaffirmed the council's belief that it should bolster promotion of e-commerce infrastructure building services for SMEs. 'Our preferential offering of services aims to make sure no SME will be barred from access to the world of e-commerce because of concerns about costs,' he said. The survey of 3,702 companies in Hong Kong found only 11 per cent had Web sites. IBM's general manager for Hong Kong and China Francis Ngai said the result of the survey was quite disappointing because the level of e-commerce adopted by SMEs was unchanged from when IBM conducted a similar survey in 1997. 'The adoption of e-business in Hong Kong is still at an embryonic stage,' Mr Ngai said. Mr Ngai attributed SME's low level of interest in e-business technology to their lack of support to assist their technology transformation and constraints in the supply of financial resources to pay for the transformation. Another survey from International Data Corp confirms the increasing importance of e-business. According to the survey, trade conducted over the World Wide Web will amount to US$1 trillion by 2003 from $300 billion and the number of people making purchases over the Internet will soar to more than 183 million. 'E-business is not a United States phenomenon,' said Marc Lautenbach, vice-president of small and medium-sized business at IBM Asia Pacific. E-COMMERCE