March 23 (SeeNews) - The number of active business entities in Macedonia edged down by 0.1% year-on-year to 71,419 in 2017, the state statistical office, Makstat, said on Friday.
The decrease was mainly due to a drop in the number of active companies in the following sectors: wholesale, retail, repair of motor vehicles; agriculture; transport, Makstat said in a statement.
In 2017, the sectors of the economy with the highest shares in terms of volume were wholesale, retail, repair of motor vehicles (32.7%); and manufacturing (11.0%).
In terms of the number of employees the largest share of 79.3% belongs to business entities with 1-9 workers, followed by business entities with no persons employed or entities with an unknown number of persons employed with 11.0%, and entities with 10-19 persons employed with 4.5%.
The share of entities with 20-49 persons employed was 2.9%, those with 50-249 persons employed had a share of 1.9% of the total number, while entities with 250 or more persons employed had a share of only 0.3%.