SPECIAL FEATURE
US$5.2 trillion: Annual unmet financing need by MSMEs in developing markets
40% of MSMEs need addtional
90 percent of new jobs globally are created by small businesses
financing in developing markets
3.3 million new jobs a month are needed in developing markets to absorb the growing workforce
PHOTO: arrowsmith2/Shutterstock.com
recognition of the significance of SMEs for employment as they represent a majority or an overwhelming majority in most countries.” According to the ILO’s 2019 Small Matters report, more than 2.3 billion people either work in SMEs or are own-account workers, all of which adds up to 70 percent of total employment worldwide. In high-income countries, 58 percent of total employment is in small economic units, while in low- and middle-income countries the proportion is considerably higher. In countries with the lowest income levels, the proportion of employment in small economic units is almost 100 percent. In addition, an average of 62 percent of employment is in the informal economy, where working conditions tend to be difficult (lack of social security, lower wages, poor occupational safety and health conditions and weaker industrial relations). “Unless one focuses on designing SMEs in a way to help them to grow and create more jobs, more importantly “decent” jobs, it’s hard to see how you can properly progress SDG 8,” Gamser says. “The three main challenges that SMEs are facing are access to finance, access to markets and access to basic skills,” says Gamser. Even though progress
has been made, he does not think the forthcoming 2023 SME financing gap figures will be much different from 2017: the gap will likely still be over US$5 trillion. However, there may be a silver lining, and we owe it to technology. This is how Gamser explains it: Just six years ago, more than half of SME retailers’ transactions were paper-based, in the form of cash or check and the basic way SME financing was accomplished was by human effort. For example, if a small business wanted to get credit, the only way for financial institutions to properly assess the risk would be to physically go and evaluate the company, which is both a very time consuming and expensive process. As a result SMEs to a large degree remained unserved or underserved and were not able to get access to funds to grow their businesses. A window of opportunity “That world is long gone,” Gamser says. Why? “First because of the emergence of new platforms for digital finance, but also partly because COVID-19 gave digital payments a huge boost. The pandemic
made many physical transactions impossible over a significant period, and made digital alternative payments, whether by card, mobile or internet, necessary for small business survival. COVID-19 also made e-commerce much, much more attractive, even for the smallest merchants.” These new models show
great promise, tapping into real-time transactional data from SMEs, enabling quicker, better-informed decisions on capital needs and risk.
SMEs provide the overwhelming majority of all
employment in economies worldwide.
Matthew Gamser,
SME Finance Forum, CEO
23
PHOTO: IFC
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