Small and medium enterprises represent a very large portion of Canada’s economy. Nearly two million of these companies employ six out of every ten working citizens of Canada. Following are few statistics from various departments and sources and are provided here under.
Exports
Exports play a crucial role in Canadian economy contributing for its growth, employment and productivity. In 2011, 10% of the Canadian SME exported goods and services accounts up to four percent of the companies total revenue.
- Almost all sizes and sectors were in to exporting due to reasons like lower transportation costs, reduced tariffs, decreased telecommunication costs, and more trade policies.
- Manufacturing and knowledge based sectors were the one which was more in to exporting of larger SME and SME.
- Exporters of SME focuses predominantly on united states where 89% percent of the exporters selling to united states and only 74% of the export value is generated from united states.
- About 10–12 percent of Canadian SME exporters sell to Latin America, Asian markets and China which accounts for less than 10 % of the total export revenues.
- In 2011, 10.4% of the SME exported and were responsible fro $150 billion or 41% of Canada’s total value of exports.
Number of businesses
- According to 2013, a total of 1,183,939 businesses were present in which 1,160,977 (98.1%)million were small businesses, 20,356(1.7%) were medium business and large business accounts up to 2,602(0.1%) in Canada.
Rate of employment
- According to the statistics of 2012, small businesses created over 100,000 jobs and employed 7.7 million or 69.7 percent of the total private labor individuals.
Survival
Around 3,200 of the business bankruptcies were in 2012.
Growth
From the year 2012 – 2014, 50% of firms in both service producing and manufacturing expects to grow from one–ten percent.
Industries that had the largest number of employees working for small industries are as follow:
- Whole sale and retail trade (1.84 million)
- Accommodation and food services (0.91 million)
- Construction (0.72 million)
- Manufacturing (0.86 million)
The above industries accounted for about 56 percent of all the jobs in small firms in Canada where industries in the goods producing sector made up to 27.3% of the total employment rate and 24% in small businesses.
Around 57% of the employer businesses in Canada are located in Quebec and Ontario and the rest present across the western provinces up to 365 and Atlantic provinces up to 7%.
Micro enterprises are in higher percentages in the industries like:
- Professional, scientific and technical services which make up to 75.7%
- Agriculture up to 71.9%
- Forestry, fishing and hunting industries about 70.3%
- Lowest percentages are found in accommodation and food services up to 27.0 percent and manufacturing sector with 33.9 percent
The relative contribution varies year to year, and small businesses out performed medium and large sized enterprises in growth of employment and the above data give a brief information regarding statistics at various levels.