Ireland

Over half of Irish exporters had customers who did not pay them over the last year, according to a survey released yesterday.

Small businesses will create more than 36,000 jobs this year, more than double last year's number, according to the Small Firms Association (SFA).

The huge VAT fraud on computer parts sales to Britain helped knock more than Ђ11bn off Irish exports last year, figures from the Central Statistics Office say.

The disruption to the postal services is already hitting small businesses hard and could result in redundancies within days, the independent business organisation ISME warned yesterday.

Creditors' voluntary liquidations fell by 16.6 per cent in 2003, according to Experian®, the leading business information company in Ireland. 316 creditors' liquidations were recorded in 2003 compared with 379 in 2002.

The level of venture capital investment has fallen sharply in the last year, but there should be a significant improvement in 2004, according to a survey from Ion Equity.

The government's commitment to progressing the Lisbon Agenda as a key priority during the Irish presidency of the EU has been welcomed by small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Irish exporters will have to become even more flexible in the current year if their sales abroad are to grow, following an extremely disappointing year on the export front in 2003.

The Irish Small and Medium Enterprises Assocation (ISME) has criticised the failure by bank representative groups to agree on a European Code of Conduct between banks and small- to medium-sized enterprises.

“Many companies have negative perceptions of invoice discounting…”

To read the full article by Barry McCall go to Ireland – Articles – 17 December 2003