Small and Medium Entrepreneurship: Ukrainian and World Experience

Abstract

The article considers the concept of small and medium enterprises in the process of economic thought formation. The task of the work is to determine and analyze the state of small and medium business in Ukraine and abroad. For this, the definitions of foreign and national scholars are outlined and their own understanding of the term is formulated. A comparative and quantitative analysis of enterprises was conducted on the basis of data collected by the State Statistics Service of Ukraine, and a positive increase in enterprises for the period 2014-2018 was revealed. In addition, the main approaches to the division of enterprises into types according to different classification criteria due to the Ukrainian economic system and the standards of the European Union, which fundamentally differ from the division system in the United States, are studied. At the same time, the indicators of small and medium-sized enterprises of the USA and European countries are considered, that allows us to say that the largest percentage of the contribution to GDP belongs to the small and medium-sized enterprise sector. The described features of SMEs in comparison with other types of enterprises determine the importance of SMEs as a stable and self-sufficient sector of the economy which requires support from government regulation. The urgency of research on the topic of SMEs is primarily dictated by the need to summarize the previously studied layers of this topic, the emergence of new reforms and Ukraine’s desire to improve the economic system and bring it to the world level. Economic development depends not only on internal policy principles, but also on external factors influencing the state of the world economy. The beginning of 2020 made the leaders of the world community think about the principles of maintaining economic indicators during the trigger caused by the coronavirus pandemic and the collapse of oil prices, and therefore it is natural to implement programs to support small and medium enterprises during the global recession.