The nation’s small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) last year continued on their steady growth trajectory, an annual white paper released yesterday by the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ Small and Medium Enterprise Administration showed.
The number of SMEs increased to 1.49 million last year, up 1.72 percent year-on-year, accounting for 97.65 percent of all Taiwanese businesses, the paper said.
About 9.05 million Taiwanese worked at SMEs last year, up 0.99 percent from the previous year, making up 78.73 percent of the nation’s total workforce, the report said.
The number of SMEs and the number of people employed at them both reached their highest in recent years, it said.
“More than 100,000 SMEs were created last year,” the report said.
The ministry defines an SME as a business with revenue of less than NT$100 million (US$3.46 million) a year, or employing fewer than 200 people, except for the construction, manufacturing and mining sectors, where an SME is defined as a company with capital of less than NT$80 million or with fewer than 200 employees.
Eighty percent of the nation’s SMEs were in the service industry last year, 46 percent of whom were wholesalers or retailers, the report found.
It said that 36.8 percent of Taiwanese SMEs were led by women.
“Taiwanese SMEs have shown steady, positive growth in recent years,” the report said.
Overall sales generated by SMEs reached NT$12.71 trillion last year, up 0.7 percent year-on-year and accounting for 29.6 percent of all business revenue, it said.
“SMEs are an important foundation of economic stability and job growth,” the report said.
The figures were compiled using tax data from last year, the most recent available, and labor data released by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics.
The paper recommended that the government assist in the development of SMEs through promoting the acceptance of mobile payments and schemes such as “One Town One Product” that creates rural SME opportunities.
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