China's top economic regulators subdivided categories of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by adding a "micro-sized enterprises" category, the Oriental Morning Post reported on Tuesday.

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The new category standard was released on July 4, by the National Development and Reform Commission, National Bureau of Statistics, Ministry of Finance, and Ministry of Industry and Information (MIIT). The standards are designed to help SMEs with preferential policies.

Zhu Hongren, a chief engineer at MIIT, said creating new categories for small, medium-sized and micro-sized enterprises will make it easier for the government to collect data and also help SMEs to provide more jobs.

The micro-sized enterprises are defined as companies with 20 employees or less and 3 million yuan ($464,100) in annual income or less.

According to the new standard, small, medium and micro-sized enterprises are companies with fewer than 1,000 employees or 400 million yuan in annual income, while the former standard required fewer than 2,000 employees or 300 million yuan.

The new SME standard involves 84 industries, and includes real estate, leasing and commercial service, information transmission, software and information technology service industries for the first time.