Sme's

Defining Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)

Malaysian SMEs can be grouped into three categories : Micro, Small, or Medium. Malaysia adopted a common definition of SMEs to facilitate identification of SMEs in the various sectors and subsectors. This has facilitated the Government to formulate effective development policies, support programmes as well as provision of technical and financial assistance.
An enterprise is considered an SME in each of the respective sectors based on the Annual Sales Turnover or Number of Full-Time Employees as shown in the table below.

These groupings are decided based on EITHER • the numbers of people a business employs OR • on the total sales or revenue generated by a business in a year.

I. Number of Employees

Based on the number of full-time employees :
| |Primary Agriculture |Manufacturing (including Agro-Based) & MRS* |Services Sector (including ICT**) |
|Micro |Less than 5 employees |Less than 5 employees |Less than 5 employees |
|Small |Between 5 & 19 employees |Between 5 & 50 employees |Between 5 & 19 employees |
|Medium |Between 20 & 50 employees |Between 51 & 150 employees |Between 20 & 50 employees |

*MRS : Manufacturing-Related Services
** ICT : Information and Communications Technology

II. Annual Sales Turnover

Based on annual sales turnover :
| |Primary Agriculture |Manufacturing (including Agro-Based) & MRS*|Services Sector (including ICT**) |
|Micro |Less than RM200,000 |Less than RM250,000 |Less than RM200,000 |
|Small |Between RM200,000 & less than RM1 |Between RM250,000 & less than RM10 million |Between RM200,000 & less than RM1 |
| |million