SMMEs' contribution to economy threatened by historical legacy, lacking industrial policy

Despite the widely recognised notion that formal and informal small, medium-sized and microenterprises (SMMEs) employ most of the country’s labour force, there is a lack of hard evidence on the composition of small businesses in South Africa, Human Sciences Research Council senior research specialist Justin Visagie has said. During a presentation at the yearly Trade & Industry Policy Strategies (TIPS) Forum on July 30, he attributed the lack of that data partly to a weakness in South Africa’s statistical ecosystem and limited availability of any firm databases, despite there being numerous household databases.