Modes of Export Finance and Firms’ Export Performance : A Study of Chemical Export Units

The study is an attempt to analyse the impact of specific sources of finance on firms' export performance by investigating empirically the SME exporters' preferred mode of financing their various export operations and linking it with their export profitability. Based on the findings it is concluded that the funds sourced from commercial banks have a significant impact on their export performance, while profit ploughed back into the firms' export operations were also found to be important. The effect of development finance sources' such as EXIM bank, SIDBI, IFCI, etc., on export performance having considered the other forms of medium and long term finical facilities/sources was, however, insignificant