Impacts of shocks on small and medium Agribusiness firms in Namuwongo Subcounty in Kampala district

Abstract

Agribusiness firms are continuously affected by shocks, that have both immediate and long-term effects. This special project research classifies the types of shocks, their effect of shocks on the performance of small-scale agribusiness and also suggests measures for firm‟s resilience to shocks in Namuwongo Sub-county in Kampala district. Questionnaires were used to collect data from randomly selected small scale agribusiness entrepreneurs. The data was analyzed using a Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The results show that all the respondents had experienced shocks in their agribusinesses. The results also indicate that abrupt changes in price affects the small-scale agribusinesses the most as experienced by 93.3 percent of the respondents. However, most of the firms are able to recover from the shocks by using loans from financial institutions as shown by 63.3 percent of the respondents. The findings also show that shocks affect small scale agribusinesses by reducing consumer demand for their products. The main recommendation from this study therefore is for the government to ease recovery of businesses from the impacts of the shocks by availing loans and reducing taxes for small scale agribusiness entrepreneurs