1 The Statistical Issues and Interests of the Korean women owned SMEs Republic of Korea The Small and Medium Business Administration

2 Contents 3 Introduction 3 The Progress of the Survey 3 Results and Limitations 3 Proposals for Further Improvements

The Small and Medium Business Administration 3 Introduction  Contribution of women-owned business to national economy - No. of employment and establishments etc.

The Small and Medium Business Administration 4  Traditional industry sectors favored by women entrepreneurs : Hotels & Restaurant and Wholesale & retail trade - Emerging new sectors such as S/W, ICT and e- commerce  Government recognizes the importance of women entrepreneurs - introducing an Act, June starting the survey on women owned businesses, Nov. 1999

The Small and Medium Business Administration 5 Progress of the Survey  Since 1999, survey on women-owned business been done biannually

The Small and Medium Business Administration 6 Limitations  Inconsistency of parent population - leaving incomplete and incomparable data  Low retrieval rate and high rejection rate - causing extra labor, time and cost  Low credibility of answers in financial performance - threatening the whole credibility of the survey

The Small and Medium Business Administration 7 Inconsistency with other surveys Name of the Survey (frequency) Sample Population Scope (No. of workers) Sectors (ISICS) Fact finding survey on women SMEs Women owned businesses1 ~ 299 B ~ J, L, M, Q, R Fact finding survey on SMEs Business in manufacturing industry 5 ~ 299D Analysis of financial data Business whose turnover exceeds 1 bill. KRW 5 ~ 299 B ~ J, L, M, Q, R Financial statement analysis Legal entities whose turnover exceeds 2 bill. KRW 1 ~ no restriction B ~ J, L, M, Q, R

The Small and Medium Business Administration 8 Inconsistency within the survey

The Small and Medium Business Administration 9 1st Stage : Making Contact

The Small and Medium Business Administration 10 2st Stage : Retrieval Questionnaire

The Small and Medium Business Administration 11 Financial Performance (Ordinary profit to equity)

The Small and Medium Business Administration 12 Further improvements  Develop a population data base that covers the whole demography of SMEs for all surveys - make stratification of population as close as possible with that of already existing SMEs surveys  Utilize already available DB so that get rid of redundancy in the questionnaire as much as possible

The Small and Medium Business Administration 13 Further improvements  Elaborate on the questionnaire to make it more respondent friendly by incorporating the specific feature of women entrepreneurs  Provide accounting S/W for SMEs to get familiar with filing financial statement  Return some value to participating respondents