Taiwan’s small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) last year reached record highs in quantity and employment, continuing their steady growth trajectory, an annual white paper released by the Ministry of Economic Affairs showed yesterday.
The number of SMEs rose to 1.72 million last year, up 2.48 percent year-on-year, Small and Medium Enterprise and Startup Administration Secretary-General Jia-jin Lee (李佳瑾) said at a press conference to release the white paper.
SMEs accounted for 98.87 percent of all Taiwanese businesses last year, and the figure is expected to remain similar this year, Lee said.
Photo: Lin Jin-hua, Taipei Times
About 9.19 million Taiwanese worked at SMEs last year, up 0.29 percent from the previous year, making up 79.29 percent of the nation’s total workforce, hitting a record high, Lee said.
Overall sales generated by SMEs last year grew 8.05 percent year-on-year to NT$31.1 trillion (US$988.7 billion), accounting for 51.99 percent of all business revenue, Lee said.
Domestic sales accounted for 90.27 percent of SMEs’ total sales last year, while export sales made up 9.73 percent, indicating that domestic demand remains a key growth driver for these enterprises, she said. Eighty percent of the nation’s SMEs were in the service industry last year, 44.79 percent of which were wholesalers or retailers, the report found.
SMEs in the industrial sector accounted for 19.08 percent of the total, it said.
It was the first time the paper included an SME operations survey, which showed that the most urgent needs for SMEs were funding support, including tax deductions or deferrals and financial assistance, Lee said.
Last year, 1,366 enterprises applied for tax reductions related to research and development investment, the issuance of new shares in exchange for intellectual property, increased hiring and wage increases, based on the Act for Development of Small and Medium Enterprises (中小企業發展條例), Lee said.
She said 827 employees were newly hired, while 31,769 workers received pay raises.
The ministry offered credit guarantees for loans to SMEs that raised wages, with a cap of NT$35 million per borrower, Lee said.
A total of 2,787 companies applied for the loans, totaling NT$8.23 billion, with an average wage increase of about 9.6 percent benefiting 17,545 employees, she added.
Vincent Wei led fellow Singaporean farmers around an empty Malaysian plot, laying out plans for a greenhouse and rows of leafy vegetables. What he pitched was not just space for crops, but a lifeline for growers struggling to make ends meet in a city-state with high prices and little vacant land. The future agriculture hub is part of a joint special economic zone launched last year by the two neighbors, expected to cost US$123 million and produce 10,000 tonnes of fresh produce annually. It is attracting Singaporean farmers with promises of cheaper land, labor and energy just over the border.
US actor Matthew McConaughey has filed recordings of his image and voice with US patent authorities to protect them from unauthorized usage by artificial intelligence (AI) platforms, a representative said earlier this week. Several video clips and audio recordings were registered by the commercial arm of the Just Keep Livin’ Foundation, a non-profit created by the Oscar-winning actor and his wife, Camila, according to the US Patent and Trademark Office database. Many artists are increasingly concerned about the uncontrolled use of their image via generative AI since the rollout of ChatGPT and other AI-powered tools. Several US states have adopted
A proposed billionaires’ tax in California has ignited a political uproar in Silicon Valley, with tech titans threatening to leave the state while California Governor Gavin Newsom of the Democratic Party maneuvers to defeat a levy that he fears would lead to an exodus of wealth. A technology mecca, California has more billionaires than any other US state — a few hundred, by some estimates. About half its personal income tax revenue, a financial backbone in the nearly US$350 billion budget, comes from the top 1 percent of earners. A large healthcare union is attempting to place a proposal before
KEEPING UP: The acquisition of a cleanroom in Taiwan would enable Micron to increase production in a market where demand continues to outpace supply, a Micron official said Micron Technology Inc has signed a letter of intent to buy a fabrication site in Taiwan from Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電) for US$1.8 billion to expand its production of memory chips. Micron would take control of the P5 site in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼) and plans to ramp up DRAM production in phases after the transaction closes in the second quarter, the company said in a statement on Saturday. The acquisition includes an existing 12 inch fab cleanroom of 27,871m2 and would further position Micron to address growing global demand for memory solutions, the company said. Micron expects the transaction to
RSS