| Pub. Date | : Jun, 2019 |
|---|---|
| Product Name | : The IUP Journal of Entrepreneurship Development |
| Product Type | : Article |
| Product Code | : IJED31906 |
| Author Name | :Musa L FaaL and P Pakkeerappa |
| Availability | : YES |
| Subject/Domain | : Management Studies |
| Download Format | : PDF Format |
| No. of Pages | : 13 |
The objective of this paper is to assess the relationship between government support programs and performance of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Brikama region of Gambia. Three dimensions of government support programs, namely, training assistance, financial assistance and marketing assistance are analyzed to examine the relationship between government support programs and performance (proxied by sales, return on asset, return on equity, assets turnover, net profit and debt ratio) of SMEs. Using a questionnaire, 80 SMEs are sampled via stratified sampling method. Percentages and Pearson chi-square techniques are utilized to analyze the data. Among others, the study finds a statistically significant relationship between sales and training assistance. In addition, the relationships between marketing assistance and sales as well as marketing assistance and return on assets are found to be statistically significant. Further, the relationships between financial assistance and return on equity as well as financial assistance and debt ratio are found to be statistically significant. Therefore, there is a need for increased government support in order to enhance the performance of SMEs in Gambia.
In both industrialized and developing nations, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) account for the vast majority of businesses and constitute a significant portion of GDP and employment (Ardic et al., 2011). Nonetheless, SMEs are often left behind larger firms in multiple facets of performance. This is widely thought to emanate from the problems SMEs encounter, including poor managerial and labor skills, access to finance, lack of ability to exploit economies of scale associated with production, methods of work organization, new technologies and insufficient knowledge about market opportunities (Yoshino and Taghizadeh, 2016). In many cases, they also suffer from labor productivity laws that cause high inflexibility, onerous procedures for establishing, running and growing an enterprise, and investment environment issues that are more oppressive to them when compared to that of their larger counterparts. As a result, many firms continue to remain stagnant, fail to export and encounter problems of high costs of transaction and mortality rates (Klapper and Sulla, 2002).