DUBAI: The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) had around 13,480 small and medium-sized enterprises at the end of 2014. Of these, 10,809 were categorised as small factories and 2,671 as medium factories, according to the Gulf Organization for Industrial Consulting (GOIC).
In an interview with ONA, Abdul Aziz al Aqeel, secretary general of GOIC, said total investment in the region’s SME sector touched US$15.3bn, which was 4.1 per cent of the total industrial investment, which stood at US$380.1bn. Small industries accounted for about US$6bn with medium industries taking up US$9.4bn.
Aqeel said the decision to categorise units based on capital investment was reached after a thorough review of the components of the manufacturing industry database in GCC countries. Accordingly it was decided that small industries are those with an investment of less than US$2mn, and medium units are those in the US$2mn to US$6mn range.
He added that according to GOIC data, SMEs made up for 82.7 per cent of the total factories in the manufacturing sector in 2014. The sector recruited about 674,933 employees, or about 44.1 per cent of the total number of workers in manufacturing, which recruited roughly 1.5mn workers.
Small and medium units are largely concentrated in the construction, metals, transportation and other industries sectors, which accounted for 3,683 factories, constituting approximately 27 per cent of the total number.
Aqeel added that the non-metallic materials industry came in second with about 2,297 plants in 2014, accounting for nearly 17 per cent of the total number of SME factories, followed by the food and beverage industries and rubber and plastics products by 11 per cent.
In terms of accumulated capital, he added, construction, minerals, transportation and other industries stood first, with US$3.9bn in terms of accumulated investment volume, accounting for about 25 per cent of the total investments in the SME sector.
