SME’s in the Financial and Economic Crisis Focus on Three Maghreb

If large companies constitute in most of countries developed or underdeveloped the core of the economic activity as it’s the main basis on which works the whole economy by providing equipment and intermediary consumptions to the economic sectors. However, that kind of companies remains relatively few flexible and few adaptable to the environment changes. Small and medium companies (businesses) seem more sensitive and better response to environment changes. Their limited size and their mode of management, their simple production processes and their dynamism the commercial field, make them a very important element in economic activity. The manifestations of the dynamism of SMEs appears mainly at the level of their contribution to employment, to national added value and to innovation. However, their structures and their mode of management and particularly, their limited access to banking sources (credit) makes them very sensitive and very fragile in front of economic crisis. It’s particularly true in the case of SMEs in developing countries, where SMEs are isolated because of the lack in public support and the difficulty of access to financial means necessary to counter economic crisis. After having shown the importance of SMEs in the economy in general, we shall try to highlight the situation and the reaction of SMEs in three Maghreb countries (Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia) facing the economic crisis result of the financial crisis of 2008 and the debt crisis in the euro area.