MICRO AND SMALL ENTERPRISES IN LEBANON

Most of the surveyed MSEs operate in one location only (60%), while 19% operate from twolocations and 21% have 3 locations and more. The existence of another location in which theenterprise operates increased with its size. For instance, while only 2.5% of MSEs employing oneperson do have another location, this percentage increases to 33.3% for MSEs employing 10 - 49persons. The multi-location operation is mostly concentrated in Beirut and Mount-Lebanon (19% and12% respectively).Only 12% of surveyed entrepreneurs have partners. The bigger the size of the MSE (in terms ofemployees), the higher is the probability of partnership ventures. While only 6% of MSEs belongingto the one-employee category have a partner, 33% of MSEs belonging to category [10-49] employeesdo. In the majority of cases (59%), the number of partners does not exceed one, and in 70% of thecases the partners are family relatives.III.5 Working ConditionsIII.5.1 Working daysThe questionnaire integrated two different variables to measure the working time: working days andworking hours. The analysis of these two variables shows the same pattern. Results show that most ofthe surveyed MSEs work 6 days per week with an average number of working days of 6.3 per week(59.5% of enterprises work 6 days per week, while 37.5% work 7 days per week).Cross-tabulation analysis shows that there are slight variations based on gender and sectoral activities.Female entrepreneurs work less than male entrepreneurs; although the results are not significantlydifferent (the average working days per week are 6.3 for females and 6.4 for males). No significantdifferences in the average working time appear with the size and location of MSEs. However, itappears that services sectors (trade and tourism) have longer working time than other economicsectors, where the average number of working days per week increases to 6.7 in hotels andrestaurants.III.5.2 Work placeThe MSEs’ working place is mainly constituted of a “Shop” (89.3% of the cases). However, someother categories of work places exist, such as workshops (2.6%), open space (1.6%), apartments(1.3%), offices (0.9%), rooms (0.8%)…etc.The size of MSEs is an important factor affecting the work place. The percentage of workshopsincreases with size (0.83% in category one-employee versus 13.6% in category [10-49] employees),and the percentage of shops decreases with size (94.7% in category one-employee versus 38.3% incategory [10-49] employees).Around 63% of the work places are rented, while 32% are owned. Obviously, rented places decreasesand owned places increases according to size.Figure 6: Travel Duration>30mn8%