The study seeks to examine the effects of credit guarantee schemes on Micro, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (MSME) lending. Specifically, the paper examined the performance of a specified credit guarantee scheme, effect of the credit guarantee scheme on MSME loan default probability and how...

Micro, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (MSMEs) are crucial drivers of economic growth. In Kenya, MSMEs represent about 98 percent of all businesses and contribute over 30 percent to the GDP. Despite their essential role in the economy, these enterprises face substantial challenges in...

This paper assesses the debt financing gap for SMEs, which undermines their competitiveness and leads to sub-optimal investments. The analysis is done by exploring financial market failures in the EU in terms of providing credit to financially viable borrowers. We use SME survey data to gauge...

Given the European Union's commitments of achieving net zero by 2050 and advocating Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG) targets, ESG is having an increasingly larger impact on businesses (Alamillos & De Mariz, 2022). Various studies have concluded that if a company has a high...

Micro, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (MSMEs) are crucial drivers of economic growth. In Kenya, MSMEs represent about 98 percent of all businesses and contribute over 30 percent to the GDP. Despite their essential role in the economy, these enterprises face substantial challenges in...

Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are vital to economic growth, innovation, and job creation across Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Women entrepreneurs are key contributors to this sector, yet they face persistent barriers to accessing finance, which constrain their business growth and broader...

This working paper provides an updated overview of the key markets the EIF focuses on, highlighting the challenges and opportunities in SME financing during these uncertain times. It reviews the overall market environment, explores developments in SME equity, guarantees, securitisation, and...

Sobre la propuesta de una definición de funciones centrales de la banca de desarrollo (financiar proyectos públicos y privados en las áreas económica, social y ambiental identificadas en su visión estratégica; proporcionar financiación a las micro, pequeñas y medianas empresas; contribuir...

This working paper provides an updated overview of the key markets the EIF focuses on, highlighting the challenges and opportunities in SME financing during these uncertain times. It reviews the overall market environment, explores developments in SME equity, guarantees, securitisation, and...

Collateral is a significant challenge for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in acquiring formal credit. Bank market concentration can cause to increase collateral demand through enhancing bank market power. This study explores the relationship between bank market concentration and the...

This study explores the impact of relationship banking on the financial constraints and loan conditions of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in China. Our research contributes to the literature in several ways. First, we examine both the financial costs and loan benefits associated with...

By using an enhanced enterprise matching approach, we obtained microdata on the supply chain interconnections between small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and listed companies. Our findings suggest that becoming the main counterparties of listed companies can significantly improve the...

The resurgence of war in Europe and rising tensions have created a new urgency for the European Union (EU) to better address existing and foreseeable security and defence challenges. In the defence sector, three issues stand out as critical: innovating, producing key systems and securing value...

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and entrepreneurs have confronted a series of shocks in recent years, impacting their access to finance. While financing conditions have eased in many economies following a period of monetary tightening, borrowing costs for SMEs remain high relative to...

A sustainable financing strategy for SMEs should aim to enhance a low-cost collateral-free supply of loans to SMEs with good track records of repayments to banks. This paper suggests two alternative financing mechanisms to overcome certain borrowing constraints of SMEs. First, it suggests an...

This paper aims to explore the role of financial literacy, risk preference, and home bias in Minangkabau ethnic SME financing decisions, and whether their financing pattern follow the pecking order theory. The theoretical framework model was developed to determine the impact of financial...

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) face obstacles in raising capital and accessing financial services due to information asymmetry, high transaction costs and lack of collateral. FinTech developments have made gathering and sharing information easier, changed how funds are mobilized and...

This is the first book in English that uses multiple data sources to comprehensively examine issues related to small and medium enterprise (SME) finance in Japan. The first feature of the book is that it empirically examines issues that are important not only for Japan but also for other...

The OECD Financing SMEs and Entrepreneurs Scoreboard: 2025 Highlights tracks financing trends, conditions and policy developments across nearly 50 countries. The paper provides official data on SME financing from 2007 to 2023, with additional insights for 2024 and early 2025, covering debt,...

This working paper provides an overview of the main markets relevant to the EIF, thereby documenting the impact of the current inflationary environment, the war in Ukraine and the aftermath of the pandemic on the SME financing environment. The publication first discusses the general market...

The Park Geun-hye administration put forward the “creative economy” as a new growth strategy for the sustainable growth of Korea. To achieve this goal, SMEs and start-ups are regarded as key players in fostering the creative economy ecosystem, and new policy directions and alternative policy...

This paper studies FinTech platforms’ role in SMEs’ access to financing using French administrative data. We show that firms served by FinTech platforms have less tangible assets than bank borrowers. Relative to observably similar firms that take out bank loans or were denied FinTech credit,...

Studies on the influence of trust on credit activity focus mainly on its impact on credit contracts. However, research has highlighted that these are strongly related to the kind of lending technology used by the bank. How trust shapes a bank’s business model is an issue that has not yet been...

The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) provided small businesses with roughly $800 billion dollars in uncollateralized, low-interest loans during the pandemic, almost all of which will be forgiven. With 93 percent of small businesses ultimately receiving one or more loans, the PPP nearly...

With most economies seeking to tap on MSMEs to navigate beyond the devastating impact of Covid-19, this paper seeks to create an understanding of the MSMEs demand-side credit perspectives. Using 279 MSMEs from the KBA Inuka Enterprise program, we anchor our analysis on a three-step probit model...

Using newly collected data from the EIB Bank Lending Survey, carried out by the EIB with support from the Central Bank of Jordan, this report focuses on cyclical and structural aspects of corporate and SME lending, and investigates the actions of Jordanian banks taken during COVID-19. The impact...

Technology has demonstrated its potential to transform money, payments, and finance within a growing social digital transformation. While key stakeholders focus on building public infrastructure to enable faster transition towards digital economies, it is important to look inward and leverage...