Publication CEPYME500 2017

#CEPYME500
SPANISH CORPORATE STRUCTURE AND CEPYME500
The Spanish economy is growing at an astonishing
rate, as it had not happened since 2008, after nine
years since the beginning of the recession.
This growth is based on various factors, both internal
and external, and it is helping to the recovery and
consolidation of the Spanish companies and their
workers. The continuation of the current economic
and employment growth trend mainly depends on
the very own competitiveness and growth improvement
of small and medium-sized enterprises.
SMEs are the fundamental structures of our productive
activity and any analysis performed to assess
business structure and demography factually endorses
this statement.
Another hallmark of our corporate structure is that
the Spanish SME network stands out for its intense
focus on a small number of productive activities.
Spain is a SME-country, especially when it comes to
micro-enterprises. Of the total amount of companies,
99.9% of them have less than 250 workers. More
than 55% of those do not have any wage-earners,
meaning that about 1.79 million of companies consist
of individual entrepreneurs. Almost two thirds of the
SMEs that do employ staff members belong to a
reduced group just operating within a 10-activity pool.
“Data show that
CEPYME500
companies are leaders
in business growth”
Considering the rest of the companies with employees
(1.44 million companies), 90% have less than 10 employees;
115,641 are small enterprises; 1.3% are medium-sized
companies and only about 4,000 companies
are classified as large enterprises. In other words, of
those companies with employees, only 0.3% have more
than 249 wage-earners.
Regarding their sectoral focus, 81% of the SMEs with
employees belong to the service sector (where the
activities of wholesale and retail commercial distribution,
catering, land transport, legal works and accounting
must be highlighted); 11% belong to the construction industry
and 8% to the industry sector, where activities like
metal product manufacturing –except for machinery and
equipment activities– and activities related to the food
industry and wood production and transformation draw
together the majority of the small-sized companies.
According to the Statistical Office of the European Union
(Eurostat) Spanish SMEs sustain almost three quarters
of the private sector employment and generate 61.4%
of the added value. Both figures are above the average
registered in the EU-28 countries. The fundamental
difference if compared to our main Community trade
partners is the weight that micro-enterprises have in
terms of activity and employment. Likewise, unlike these
countries, our corporate structure is focused on productive
activities that are less intensive in terms of fixed and
technological capital deployment.
These particular features of the Spanish economy are
closely linked to our growing problems. In this sense,
small-sized enterprises are still facing the urgent need
to face a structural market change, fundamentally
marked by the challenges imposed by international
expansion and digitalisation. Indeed, these are sources
that can make new business development and consolidation
opportunities arise.
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