Small firms dominate local entrepreneurship

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

Workers assemble jewelry at an Istanbul facility. Small and medium companies are shouldering Turkey’s exports. DAILY NEWS photo, Hasan ALTINIŞIK

Small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs) make up most of the companies and employment in Turkey, according to the latest data released by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) on Oct. 19.

SMEs make up 99.9 percent of total business enterprises, 77.8 percent of the employment, 51.5 percent of wages and salaries, 64.8 percent of turnover, and 41.1 percent of gross capital investments.SMEs realized 59.6 percent of Turkey’s exports, but accounted for only about 40 percent of total imports. Trade firms took the lion’s share of imports, according to the breakdown of exports and imports realized by SMEs. Industrial SMEs accounted for 36 percent of exports and 33.9 percent of imports. SMEs, which are active in the trade sector, conducted nearly 60 percent of the exports and 56.6 percent of the imports.

Europe top destination

SMEs accounted for 53.3 percent of exports to European countries and 32.6 percent of exports to Asian countries. As for imports, they accounted for 51.8 of imports from Europe and 36.7 percent of imports from Asia.

Industrial goods that SMEs produced took the majority of the share in exports with 91.8 percent. Among these exports, textile goods took the first rank with 15 percent, followed by base metals with 12.7 percent.

Wholesale and retail trade firms and motor vehicle, motorcycle repair shops constitute 42.4 percent of all SMEs, while transportation and storage firms have 16.5 percent. Manufacturing industries have a 12.9 percent share.

Meanwhile, the number of newly established firms increased in September, according to data from the Union of Chamber and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey (TOBB).

The number of newly established companies was 2,632 in September, posting a 12.53 percent increase from the same month a year earlier.