Small and medium enterprise
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Small and medium enterprises or SMEs are companies whose headcount or turnover falls below certain limits.
The abbreviation SME occurs commonly in the EU and in international organizations, such as the World Bank, the United Nations and the WTO. The term Small or Medium sized Business or SMB has become more standard in a few other countries.
EU Member States traditionally had their own definition of what constitutes an SME, for example the traditional definition in Germany had a limit of 500 employees, while, for example, in Belgium it could have been 100. But nowadays the EU has started to standardise the concept. Its current definition categorises companies with fewer than 50 employees as "small", and those with fewer than 250 as "medium". By contrast, in the United States, when small business is defined by the number of employees, it often refers to those with less than 100 employees, while medium-sized business often refers to those with less than 500 employees. However, the most widely used American definition of micro-business by the number of employees are the same of that of European Union: less than 10 employees.
As of 2005, Germany will use the definition of the European Commission.
Business enterprises of fewer than 10 employees often class as SOHO (for Small office/home office).
In most economies, smaller enterprises are much greater in number. In the EU, SMEs comprise approximately 99% of all firms and employ between them about 65 million people.
[edit] External links
- Association of Small Medium Enterprises Singapore's SME Body
- Federation Of Indian Micro and Small & Medium Enterprises India's largest SME body
- U.S. Small Business Administration The U.S. Federal government agency that administers resources for small businesses.
- MySME.com Small-To-Medium Enterprises Resources, Directory and Classifieds.
- NFIB The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) is an advocacy group with over 600,000 independent and small business members from across the United States.
- SME Data (Excel file) Data on micro, small, and medium enterprise (MSME) participation in the economies of over 70 countries, including selected business environment and investment climate indicators.
- SME Department of the International Finance Corporation, a member of the World Bank Group. Information about IFC's work to promote SME development in emerging economies. Link to their quarterly e-newsletter, OUTCOMES, monitoring & evaluation information, data and publications.
- Current Definition from the European Commission
- Web site with information for European SMEs from European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (OSHA)
- Resource page on SMEs
- Resources for Latin American SMEs Web site devoted to support the creation of competitive and profitable SMEs in Latin America.
- Resources for Finnish SMEs Web site devoted to supporting Finnish Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in finding local business partner globally.
- UEAPME: The European Office of Craft, Small and Medium - sized Enterprises
- http://www.milagrow.in Milagrow Business and Knowledge Solutions is a unique organization which partners MSMEs in India to help them start up, scale up or turnaround. Its founded by a visionary leader Rajeev Karwal and has Dr Jagdish Sheth of Emory and Prof Anil Gupta of IIM Ahmedabad as Mentor and Value Ombudsman respectively.
