Report

Small business, big world

This report from UK think tank the Social Market Foundation explores ways to boost UK small business exports.

Increasing the number of small businesses that export can be a key lever to grow the UK’s economic pie. However, the UK’s recent record on small business exporting is not encouraging.

This report explores three key ways to boost small business exports – wider adoption of trade tech, boosting the number of female-led businesses that export and the access to emerging markets – and how to address the barriers to progress on each front. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which account for 99% of the UK’s businesses, and half of private sector output, could and should play a vital role in improving the country’s growth rate – through exporting. We demonstrated in our 2022 report Just a click away that increasing the number of SMEs which export goods by 70,000, could add £9.3 billion a year to national income and create 152,000 new jobs.

Evidence from other comparable countries shows that this is possible. In Canada for example, 12.1% of Canadian SMEs are estimated to export. This figure was up from 10.4% in 2011.

SMF has partnered with the E-Commerce Trade Commission, a body advising the Department for Business and Trade on how to encourage and support small businesses to trade internationally online, to identify how the UK can increase the number of small businesses that export goods by 70,000.