Developing Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in Islamic Developing Countries: Exploring the Influential Factors for Egypt

Abstract

Egypt is one of the largest Islamic developing countries trying to improve their economies and the development of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) has been suggested as a potential means of doing so. This paper analyzed multiple macro level economic factors that can help the development of the Egyptian SMEs based on the data from World Bank. Our results showed that increasing the sources for financing SMEs by loans and the claims on government may facilitate the growth of Egyptian SMEs. In addition, we found that just increasing exports by eliminating the barriers that hinder Egyptian exports may not help the SMEs’ development. Finally, in the current social and economic circumstances, increasing the use of internet was found to be not significant in contributing to Egyptian SMEs. The implications from the results and the recommendations for developing Egyptian SMEs are also suggested.