Contribuţia IMM-urlor din Republica Moldova, inclusiv pe clase de mărime, la crearea locurilor de muncă în perioada 2015-2021

Abstract

SMEs hold a significant share in the total number of enterprises in the Republic of Moldova, they are, therefore, the main provider of jobs for the population and the main source of income, including for socially vulnerable categories. The government, through its policies, supports the creation and development of SMEs, as well as the creation of new jobs. The comprehensive analysis of the entrepreneurial ecosystem and the factors that could stimulate it, the monitoring of the indicators of the development of the SME sector allows to argue for the design of more effective policies for the development of national entrepreneurship in general, but also to support SMEs to adapt and go through the created economic crisis. The main objective of this paper is to analyze the contribution of the SME sector to the creation and maintenance of jobs. The analysis was carried out based on the data of the National Bureau of Statistics and includes the period 2015-2021 (for the year 2015, the data were used, recalculated according to the new methodology, developed by the NBS in 2016). Following the analysis, it was found that in 2021 the number of employees in SMEs was slightly lower than in 2020, despite the fact that the number of enterprises increased. This decrease is a continuation of the evolution from 2020, when, against the background of the pandemic, the largest decrease in the number of employees was recorded.