Jabit

Recently I was perusing the slides from the launch of the EU Finance Day for SMEs initiative held in Ljubljana, Slovenia. I found the following information interesting.

1. There are 23 million SMEs in the EU (99% of all enterprises) and they account for about 75 million jobs.
2. SMEs are defined as firms with less than 250 employees and annual turnover of less than €50 million and/or annual balance less than €43 million.
3. Small enterprises are defined as having less than 50 employees.
4. Micro enterprises are defined as having less than 10 employees.
5. Main Business constraints for SME’s:
   • Purchasing power of customers(46%)
   • Administrative regulations (36%)
   • Lack of human resources (35%)
   • Cost of human resources (33%)
   • Infrastructure problems (23%)
   • Limited access to finance (21%)
6. 70% of SMEs have no or few R&D activities.
7. 20% of SMEs (termed “technology adoption enterprises”) adapt existing technologies.
8. Less that 10% of SMEs (termed “Leading Technology Users”) develop or combine existing technologies on an innovative level.
9. Less than 3% of SMEs (termed “Technology Pioneers”) have high levels of research activities.

I am keeping a close eye on when the EU Finance Day for SMEs is going to happen in Ireland and I’ll post here as soon as I find out.