SME Financial Inclusion for Sustained Growth in the Middle East and Central Asia

Access to Finance Among Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises and Job Creation in Africa

“…Recent analysis suggests that the poverty rate in African countries is expected to decline only to about 25% by 2030 while in the other regions of the world it will drop to less than 3% (Bicaba et al, 2017;Beegle and Christiansen, 2019). Among the factors holding back poverty reduction is the lack of access to finance for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which are among the largest contributors to job creation in developing countries (Blancher, 2019;Ghassibe et al, 2019). A report from the International Financial Corporation (2017) estimated that in developing countries, more than 40% of SMEs have at least partially constrained access to external finance, while about 20% face heavy constraints.…”