Regional SMEs and Competition in the Wake of the Financial and Economic Crisis

The Asian financial and economic crisis had widespread effects, many of which are still in the process of being resolved. While the region consists of many diverse, although closely integrated, economies, a common characteristic is the significance of a sizeable and rapidly expanding SME sector. However, given such diversity, it can be reasonably expected that the SMEs in these economies are at different stages of development, their contributions to the respective economies are different, and policies adopted in these economies as a means of encouraging their development will also diverge. While they may face similar general difficulties such as: access to finance; access to technology; development of human resources; and access to market information, it is unlikely that these difficulties are inherently identical, and hence appropriate policies to stimulate their recovery are also unlikely to be identical across these varying economies. However, what is clear is that these SMEs, in the wake of the financial and economic crisis of 1997/98 and the immense restructuring across the region that is taking place with the objective of producing transparent, efficient and globally competitive corporate sectors, are in a strong position to lead the economic recovery of the region arising from increased business opportunities.