The Profiling of Awareness of Access and Use of Finance: A Case Study of SMEs in Karachi

Abstract

This paper attempts to focus on factors that affect access to finance in SMEs in Pakistan and the obstacles that affects their performance. The study also analyzed the relationship between certain characteristics of owners/managers, their businesses, their need to finance, together with the difficulties they face in accessing finance from Pakistani banks, and how that access affects their performance. The study also identified business environment available for SMEs in Pakistan. The primary data in this study were gathered via questionnaire responses from 150 SMEs in Pakistan. The research found that there are some significant relationships between owners/managers characteristics (like education & training, and experience) and firms’ characteristics (like business size, business ownership type and availability of business plan), and the difficulties faced in accessing bank loan, as well as the need to access funds from Pakistani banks. It was also found that the main reasons for most owners/managers failing to access finance from Pakistani banks were lack of collateral, poor financial performance, infeasible business plans, incomplete information and high interest rate. The findings of the study also demonstrate internal and external obstacles such as availability of capital, competition, customer satisfaction and marketing as the most significant obstacles affecting business performance.

Keywords: small medium enterprises (SME), access to finance, pecking order theory, business characteristic, owner characteristics, business performance