The Secretary of State's Office says the number of small to medium size business registrations is growing in Mississippi. As MPB's Mark Rigsby reports, a new survey shows companies are telling the state what they need to be successful.
Nearly 80,000 businesses participated in the survey. It shows the biggest barriers to setting up shop in Mississippi are financial resources and insurance. The most important success factor to them is having an educated workforce. Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann.
"Well, when you look at it, over 50% of the people in Mississippi work for a company with less than 200 employees. So, we want to bolster that. That's how we raise tax revenue. To increase the taxes, you have more people working. The way you do that is small and medium businesses in Mississippi."
Hosemann is taking this new information and using it to relaunch the "Y'all Business" website.
The updated site allows the public, and more importantly new business start-ups, free access to information about the entire state, to make key business decisions.
"What's the demographics? What's the income? What's the spendable income? All of those kind of demographics. Well, we started "Y'all Business". We can tell you where the water is. Where the hospitals are. What the traffic count is. How many restaurants are in your town. All of that now is on our website."
Hosemann says there's been a significant increase in the registration of smaller companies in Mississippi. There are currently 100,000 in the state. 6,000 of them registered just in the past three months. The top three catagories: real estate, retail, and construction.
