Number of SMEs
New Zealand is predominantly a nation of small firms
Small and medium sized enterprises constitute the majority of all non-agricultural enterprises5 in New Zealand:
- 84% of enterprises employ 5 or less full time equivalent staff
- 96% of enterprises employ 19 or fewer staff
- the large number of SMEs and insignificant enterprises in the agricultural sector (and the other sectors excluded from these statistics), the contribution that smaller businesses make to the New Zealand economy is even greater than is reflected in these figures.
Figure 2
The number of SMEs shrank in 1998...
The number of SMEs shrank 0.8 percent in the year to February 1999 after expanding 6.6 percent in the previous year. This matches the contraction of 0.7 percent in the total number of firms after an increase of 6.3 percent in the year to February 1998.
...although the proportion of SMEs remains fairly constant.
As the contraction in the number of SMEs was only slightly greater than that for enterprises overall, the proportion of firms in the SME sector remained fairly constant from 1998 to 1999, falling only slightly from 96.5 to 96.3 percent.
Table 1. - Annual Percentage Change in Numbers of Enterprises (years to February)
| | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 |
| 0-5 FTEs | 3.7 | 6.0 | 7.4 | -1.2 |
| 6-9 FTEs | 2.2 | 0.7 | -0.7 | 2.7 |
| 10-19 FTEs | 1.8 | 1.9 | 3.4 | 2.0 |
| 20-49 FTEs | 5.7 | 1.8 | -0.4 | 4.4 |
| 50-99 FTEs | 3.6 | 0.3 | 1.6 | -3.7 |
| 100+ FTEs | 3.6 | 1.8 | -1.1 | 0.9 |
| Total | 3.6 | 5.2 | 6.3 | -0.7 |
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