1369.0 - Occasional Paper: Australian Business Register - A Snapshot, Oct 2000  
ARCHIVED ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 28/05/2001   
   Page tools: Print Print Page Print all pages in this productPrint All

MEDIA RELEASE

May 28, 2001
Embargoed: 11:30 AM (AEST)
54/2001

Australian Business Register - A Snapshot

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) today released information on the number of business entities operating in Australia, using data from the Australian Business Register (ABR). At October 2000 there were 3,199,930 business entities in Australia registered for an Australian Business Number (ABN) on the ABR.

The ABS has released a report, Occasional Paper: Australian Business Register - A Snapshot (cat. no. 1369.0) containing details about the information available from this new source of data.

There were 796,861 employers and 2,403,069 non-employers out of 3.2 million registered business entities. The industries that had the most business entities registered for the GST were the Property and Business Services industry (528,427) and the Construction industry (358,321). The Electricity, Gas and Water Supply industry had the least business entities registered for the GST (4,950).

At the time of registration, 82 percent of employers registered for the GST estimated that their annual turnover would be less than $500,000, 10 percent estimated that their annual turnover would be less than $50,000, while 0.1 percent estimated that their turnover would exceed $20m.

Of employers registered for the GST, 98 percent operated from locations in a single State or Territory. Tables for these single-State/Territory business entities are presented for each State and Territory by industry and size (estimated annual turnover).

Data are also presented on the 15,491 business entities which operate from locations in more than one State/Territory. More than half of these (59 percent) operate from locations in two States/Territories, while 1,306 (8 percent) operate in all States and Territories.

Further information about numbers of single location business entities are available on request.

The Occasional Paper: Australian Business Register - A Snapshot (cat. no. 1369.0) is available from ABS bookshops. The main features of the publication are available on this site. If you wish to purchase a copy of this publication, contact the ABS Bookshop in your capital city.