Liuzhou offers lucrative awards to boost industrial design

Liuzhou's industrial design enterprises will be provided with up to 1 million yuan ($149,629) in subsidies in an effort to improve their innovation capabilities. 

This was stated in a document on advancing the development of the industrial design industry and methods for managing industrial design "innovation coupons" that were recently released.

More and more enterprises are choosing to outsource industrial design to a third party with an increasingly strict division of labor. Liuzhou is looking to attract a bevy of talents who don't necessarily have to directly participate in production, but would mainly engage in product design and work to enhance a product's competitiveness.

This will not only promote the development of the local industrial design industry, but will also contribute to the industrial advancement of local enterprises.

The industrial design "innovation coupon" is a subsidy voucher meant to encourage enterprises to buy industrial designs from professional design agencies. It can be used to apply for a subsidy amounting to no more than 50 percent of the contract amount paid to the design agency. The subsidy for a single project cannot exceed 500,000 yuan, and that for a single enterprise cannot exceed 1 million yuan in a single year.

The coupon will be valid for one year and it cannot be sold, transferred or gifted to another enterprise. Enterprises from three pillar industries (automobiles, iron and steel, and machinery), strategic emerging industries, industrial enterprises above a designated size, production-oriented service industries, and traditionally dominant industries that going through industrial transformation and upgrading are given priority status for the subsidies.