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Developing-market SMEs, which have long competed for funding against bigger corporates, are counting on help from governments and multilateral lenders to keep afloat.
February 04, 2021
The long shadow cast by the coronavirus pandemic has extended perhaps most dramatically to small and midsize enterprises (SMEs), highlighting the outsized role they play in the economies of three developing regions Southeast Asia, Africa and the Middle East and the challenges they face going forward.
Full recovery from the Covid-19 crisis will be critical for these countries. According to a 2018 research paper by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), SMEs accounted for 96% of all businesses and provided two out of three private sector jobs in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region. And in that region, SMEs generated 42% of GDP in 2015. These companies are especially important players in APAC cross-border trade, accounting as of 2015 for over 40% of export values in China and India, 26% in Thail