Manual on Statistics of International Trade in Services

5. Number of enterprises 
4.64.  The number of enterprises (or establishments, 
where that is the statistical unit) meeting the criteria for 
coverage by FATS statistics is a basic indicator of the 
prevalence of majority ownership by foreigners in the 
host economy.  That number may be compared with the 
total number of firms (or establishments) in the 
economy.  It may also be assessed in relation to the other 
FATS variables because it allows the computation of 
ratios - such as value added or number of employees per 
enterprise - that may be compared with the same ratios 
for domestically owned firms, thus giving an indication 
of the behaviour of foreign affiliates. 
4.65.  It should be recognized that the number of firms 
alone may not give an accurate picture of the overall 
importance of foreign-owned firms, because of 
differences in size between these firms and those that are 
domestically owned.  If the foreign-owned firms tend to 
be larger, for example, then their share in the total 
number of firms would be smaller than their share in the 
various measures of operations and would thus tend to 
understate the role and importance of these firms in host 
country economies. 
4.66.  Typically, information on numbers of enterprises 
will be a natural by-product of collection of data on 
other FATS variables, rather than a separate object of 
the data-collection effort.  As such, the number is likely 
to be affected, often significantly, by the level of 
company consolidation and by thresholds for reporting 
on surveys.  To assist users in interpreting counts of 
                                                       
 
73
  Trade with related enterprises is defined to include trade with 
all enterprises with which there is a direct investment 
relationship. 

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70 
enterprises (or establishments), countries are encouraged 
to indicate in explanatory notes how the numbers were 
derived.