ABSTRACT

Encouraging the growth of the small and medium enterprise (SME) sector has become an important government strategy in most countries. Motivations behind the government support programmes range from the necessary and laudable aims of creating jobs to alleviating poverty, from the creation of entrepreneurial capabilities to raising skills among managers and workers. The emphasis that has thus come to be placed on small firms and entrepreneur-ship is associated with the failure of the large-scale public firms in meeting many of these objectives. Moving away from tight state control, new policies have set in motion various forms of restructuring of the enterprise sector.