Title: Access to finance and financial problems of SMEs: evidence from Egypt

Authors: Hala El-Said; Mahmoud Al-Said; Chahir Zaki

Addresses: Faculty of Economics and Political Science, Cairo University, P.O. Box 12613, Al Orman, Giza, Egypt ' Faculty of Economics and Political Science, Cairo University, P.O. Box 12613, Al Orman, Giza, Egypt ' Faculty of Economics and Political Science, Cairo University, P.O. Box 12613, Al Orman, Giza, Egypt

Abstract: Financial services seem to be under-utilised by small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) as only 50% are dealing with banks and benefiting from an improved access to finance. In addition, these firms still face several constraints in terms of access to finance. Using an extensive census that has been recently done by the Egyptian Banking Institute, we try to examine the determinants of the access to finance of SMEs in Egypt as well as the determinants of having banking problems. The main findings of this paper show that legal form, economic activity, labour, capital, and sales turnover have a significant effect on having banking facilities. In addition, we found that the smaller the firm, the higher the probability of having banking problems. We run a battery of sensitivity analysis tests and found that these results remain robust.

Keywords: small and medium-sized enterprises; SMEs; access to finance; financial services; entrepreneurship; financial problems; Egypt; banks; banking facilities.

DOI: 10.1504/IJESB.2013.056891

International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, 2013 Vol.20 No.3, pp.286 - 309

Published online: 30 Apr 2014 *

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