ABSTRACT
Small and medium Enterprises (SMEs) constitute the numeric majority of all enterprises in most economies in the world. In most industrialized countries, the SME sector as a whole accounts for around 99 per cent of all firms, micro and small firms for a little less. The situation in less developed countries is not very different. For example, in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic SMEs account for 99.5 per cent. When it comes to employment and a country’s ability to generate wealth as measured by gross domestic product (GDP), however, the large enterprise sector has a significantly higher share of the total in industrialized countries, where large firms account for around half of employment and half of the contribution to GDP. For the less-developed countries employment, the share is higher in the SME sector and its contribution to GDP less than half of what is achieved in the industrialized countries (see Chapter 2).
