Small and Medium Enterprises in Morocco: Definition's Issues and Challenges

Abstract

As a heterogeneous group of businesses, Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) has been the most essential component for developing and developed economies. Even their important contribution, SMEs still do not have a unanimous definition either in the national level or in the international one. Therefore, it is important to always search in the current literature for the updates about the definition of the SMEs. Small firms are independent firms, which employ less than a given number of employees and have a specific turnover or a balance sheet. Hence, most of variables defining SMEs varies across countries and are not official. In the following work, we are going to highlight the SME definition’s issues in most countries, and especially in Morocco. Then, we will propose some new perspectives to define small businesses and make the existence of this sector more specific and clear basing on literature review and statistics.

Keywords: Small and Medium Enterprises, SME Definition, Qualitative Criteria, Quantitative Criteria, Ratio of Size

JEL Classification: A1,D21