In his speech on Monday (5 December), the Chancellor outlined plans to improve training and make VAT payments more flexible for small firms.
Training will be boosted with the free National Employer Training Programme set to expand its reach in the SME sector to cover 50,000 companies and 300,000 employees.
"Successful economies of the global era will be the high-skill economies," said Brown.
The Chancellor revealed that he is lobbying the European Commission to allow all companies with a turnover of 1.35m or less to take advantage of flexible VAT payment options. The current turnover ceiling for these options is 660,000.
Product research and development was also in the spotlight, with plans to set up a network of "creativity and innovation centres" to train the UK's product designers.
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