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Concept
Small and medium-sized enterprises
Summary
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) or small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are businesses whose personnel and revenue numbers fall below certain limits. The abbreviation "SME" is used by international organizations such as the World Bank, the European Union, the United Nations, and the World Trade Organization (WTO).
In any given national economy, SMEs sometimes outnumber large companies by a wide margin and also employ many more people.
For example, Australian SMEs makeup 98% of all Australian businesses, produce one-third of the total GDP (gross domestic product) and employ 4.7 million people. In Chile, in the commercial year 2014, 98.5% of the firms were classified as SMEs. In Tunisia, the self-employed workers alone account for about 28% of the total non-farm employment, and firms with fewer than 100 employees account for about 62% of total employment. The United States' SMEs generate half of all U.S. jobs, but only 40% of GDP.
Developing countries tend to have a larger share of small and medium-sized enterprises. SMEs are also responsible for driving innovation and competition in many economic sectors. Although they create more new jobs than large firms, SMEs also suffer the majority of job destruction/contraction.
SMEs are important for economic and social reasons, given the sector's role in employment. Due to their sizes, SMEs are heavily influenced by their Chief Executive Officer, a.k.a. CEOs. The CEOs of SMEs are often the founders, owners, and managers of the SMEs. The duties of the CEO in a SME mirror those of the CEO of a large company: the CEO needs to strategically allocate their time, energy, and assets to direct the SMEs. Typically, the CEO is the strategist, champion and leader for developing the SME or the prime reason for the business failing.
This definition is provided in Section 7 of Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises Development Act, 2006 (MSMED Act) and was notified in September 2006. The Act provides for the classification of enterprises based on their investment size and the nature of the activity undertaken by that enterprise.
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