In Asia, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) account for a major share of employment and dominate the economy. Asian economies are often characterized as having bank-dominated financial systems and underdeveloped capital markets, in particular venture capital markets. Hence, looking for...

Uzbekistan set an ambitious goal to achieve the status of an upper-middle-income country by 2030, with the focus on growing a large and solid middle-class social stratum. The current reforms in Uzbekistan largely target the development of small businesses and private entrepreneurship (SME) as...

This study takes stock of the challenges faced by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the CAREC landlocked economies in terms of their access to finance resulting from demand-side, supply-side and institutional constraints. This includes identifying cultural, procedural, institutional...

The paper discusses state, regulative framework, and recent developments in leveraging access to finance for micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in the Kyrgyz Republic through global value chain (GVC) examples in the Kyrgyz Republic. Access to finance in the Kyrgyz Republic is...

Tajikistan's outlook for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) remains challenging as it continues to recover from economic downturn. The SME sector is small but steadily growing in terms of value addition and share of total employment, although access to finance remains poor and financial...

One of the major issues for SME development has been access to finance. This paper examines the current state of SME development and financing in Kazakhstan. It also examines the current state of the development of value chains and discusses barriers for agriculture value chain financing. The...

We introduce the Credit Risk Database (CRD) and its contribution to financial inclusion efforts in Japan. By collecting financial data about small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the CRD contributes to the overall understanding of the SME sector, to the adaptation of risk-based lending and...

This paper describes the common financing challenges faced by micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in India and some important measures taken to address them, with a focus on the credit rating scheme implemented in 2000. It examines the usefulness as well as the limitations of the...

The main objective of this paper is to understand how the changes in the macroeconomic conditions (the global financial crisis) relate to the investment and financial decision-making for each of the different size categories of SMEs. To do so, we use a large dataset of 764,963 observations in...

The cost of finance has a relatively high impact on the returns and viability of clean energy projects compared with fossil fuel-based energy projects, because the operating costs for renewable energy projects are very low. Credit risk assessment and ratings, which have usually been an...