Births and Deaths
SMEs account for the majority of all births and deaths
As would be expected, enterprise births and deaths are dominated by firms employing 5 or fewer FTEs, accounting for over 90 percent of the total number of births and deaths, both in 1999, as illustrated below, and in previous years.
Given that new small businesses were the single greatest contributor to job creation over 1995 to 1997, a high rate of enterprise births amongst small firms should be encouraged. In addition, a high number of deaths is not in itself cause for concern, as long as deaths of economically viable firms are minimised.
Figure 11
Figure 12
Enterprise deaths outnumbered births in 1999
On the back of an economic downturn both domestically and throughout the Asian region, for the first time in the last decade the number of enterprise deaths outnumbered the number of enterprise births in 1999. This was common across firm sizes, with all categories recording a net death rate.
Figure 13
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