ABSTRACT
Promotion of small enterprise development is a recent phenomenon in South East Asia which for the purposes of this chapter is defined as Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines and Thailand. It was almost non-existent until industrialisation took place around the 1960s in most of the countries. Almost without exception, one of the main objectives of industrialisation was to solve the unemployment problem in the countries. An alternative solution to the unemployment problem is to encourage the development of small enterprises, especially in the less-developed areas. Among the South East Asian countries, because of their political, social, geographical and cultural differences, the pace of economic development is different in each country, and so are the policies toward the promotion of small enterprise development as well as the assistance programmes.
