The investment of small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) in information technology (IT) will reach over 230 billion yuan (US$28.36 billion) in 2009, according to a report released recently by a Chinese global consulting company.

SMEs' demand for IT has become the principal source of growth of China's information technology market, says the report by the China Center of Information Industry Development (CCID).

They have for three years running exceeded large enterprises in terms of investment in "informationization," the report says.

The report says that SMEs have made big progress in the application of information technologies, especially software, with investment in the software sector reaching 17.16 billion yuan in 2004, accounting for 15.8 percent of the total investment. The growth is 2.2 percentage points higher than in 2003.

SMEs are shifting their focus from financial software to solution software.

Chinese enterprises have made substantial progress in terms of informationization in 2004 and the next three years will be a key period for the informationization market of SMEs to grow mature.

CCID Consulting predicts that Chinese SMEs' informationization market will further grow at an average annual rate of 18 percent in the next three years, on the basis of a 100 billion yuan market scale in 2004.

(Xinhua News Agency October 2, 2005)