Preliminary Report of the Summary of the 2019 Basic Survey on Small and Medium Enterprises (Performance Results Based on the FY2018 Closing Accounts) Compiled

1. Outline of the Basic Survey on Small and Medium Enterprises

SMEA has been conducting the Basic Survey on Small and Medium Enterprises every year as a cross-industrial survey in order to ascertain the financial and operational situation of SMEs. The 2019 survey was the 16th survey.

The survey covers approximately 113,000 SMEs randomly selected from 11 industries, namely construction; manufacturing; information and communications; transport and postal services; wholesale trade; retail trade; real estate and goods rental and leasing; scientific research, professional and technical services; accommodations, eating and drinking services; living-related and personal services and amusement services; and services, n.e.c.

This report is based on valid responses from 42,636 companies (valid response rate: 37.7%).

2. Key points of the report

• Total sales per enterprise were 156 million yen, down by 9.0% from the previous year, and total ordinary profits per enterprise were 6.59 million yen, down by 10.7% from the previous year.
• Added value per incorporated enterprise was 81 million yen, down by 8.6% from the previous year.
• The number of employees per incorporated enterprise was 15.7, down by 4.8% from the previous year, while that per individual business operator was 2.6, down by 2.0% from the previous year.
• The percentage of incorporated enterprises that have conducted business investment was 22.2%, up by 0.6 percentage points from the previous year. The percentage of incorporated enterprises that have concluded a new leasing contract was 12.8%, down by 0.3 percentage points from the previous year.
• Looking at data on presidents (individual business operators), presidents in their 60s accounted for the largest share of all presidents (30.0%), while those who have been taking office for over 30 years accounted for the largest (35.8%).

For the details of the 2019 survey results, see the Appendix.

Appendix

• Preliminary Report of the Summary of the 2019 Basic Survey on Small and Medium Enterprses (in Japanese) (PDF:528KB)PDF

Division in Charge

Research Office, Policy Planning Division, Business Environment Department, Small and Medium Enterprise Agency