Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 20 June 2017
123. Deputy Niall Collins asked the Taoiseach the number of small and medium enterprises, SMEs, that account for total exports of goods and services on a percentage basis broken down by each country worldwide in 2015 and 2016; and the number of persons employed in such SMEs. [26413/17]
View answerThe exact data requested by the Deputy is not available but some estimates can be made from the CSO’s Structural Business Statistics (SBS) surveys. The most recent estimates available from the SBS surveys are for reference year 2014. The annual Census of Industrial Production, which is a component of SBS, is based on survey returns from a sample of about 2,000 industrial enterprises, combined with estimates for other enterprises based on Revenue data. Similarly, the Annual Services Inquiry is based on survey returns from a sample of about 8,000 service enterprises and combines this with Revenue data to give the overall estimates.
The sample returns from each of these two surveys give an indication of whether the enterprise is involved in exporting goods or services. The export estimates relate only to industrial enterprises employing 3 or more persons and to services enterprises employing 20 or more persons. The following two tables show the number of SMEs in Ireland above those size thresholds in 2014 and the estimated percentage engaged in exporting goods or services.
Table 1: Numbers of SMEs in Industry and Services, 2014
|
- |
Total |
|
Industrial SMEs with between 3 and 249 persons employed |
5,164 |
|
Service SMEs with between 20 and 249 persons employed |
6,368 |
Table 2: Estimated percentage of SMEs in Industry and Services engaged in exporting (based on respondent sample returns), 2014
|
- |
Total |
|
Industrial SMEs with between 3 and 249 persons employed |
51.2% |
|
Service SMEs with between 20 and 249 persons employed |
27.4% |
Some information on the destination of exports is collected in the Census of Industrial Production, but not in the Annual Services Inquiry. This information indicates that an estimated 49% of exports by industrial SMEs as measured by the Census of Industrial Production (comprises predominantly goods data with some Industrial services data) are to the UK, 29% to the Eurozone, 7% to the rest of the EU, 7% to the USA and 8% to the rest of the world.
More detailed information on enterprises engaged in exporting goods or services can be compiled from the Trade by Enterprise Characteristics (TEC) and Service Trade by Enterprise Characteristics (STEC) datasets. These datasets are derived from the relevant goods and service export statistics. The CSO plans to publish the statistics based on the TEC dataset by the end of 2017.
