What is the contribution of small businesses to Canadas exports?
Exporting is vital to Canada’s economy, accounting for more than 40 percent of GDP in recent years. Exports can be a driver of economic growth and are strongly correlated with real GDP growth. Furthermore, exporting can provide a strategically important means of growing a firm by expanding its market beyond the confines of Canada’s relatively small domestic market. New exporter profiles tabulated the data by size of firm (number of employees) for 2002.21 This new method showed that nearly 85 percent of Canadian exporters were small businesses (defined as enterprises with fewer than 100 employees).22 More importantly, small businesses were responsible for 20 percent of the total value of exports in 2002, with an average value of $2.3 million. Medium-sized businesses accounted for 15 percent of the total value of exports in 2002, with an average value of $11.8 million, while large businesses accounted for 64 percent, with an average value of $194.5 million in exports. It is clear from th
