Assessment of the Determinants of Growth and Development of Small and Medium Enterprises in Nakawa Division, Kampala District

Abstract

overall objective is to assess the determinants of Growth and development of small and medium enterprises in Nakawa Division. The study objectives were to determine the relationship between Access to Financial Services and GD, investigate the relationship between Knowledge of services and GD, investigate the relationship between attitude towards Financial Institutions and GD , determine the relationship between characteristics of the Business and GD, determine the relationship between characteristics of the SMEs operators .The assessment was made using frequency distributions, pearson correlation and Analysis of Variance. The findings indicates that majority of the SMEs reported to have acquired more equipments(89%) and only 11% had not acquired more equipments , a great percentage (94%) reported an increased number of customers while 6% reported no increase in the number of customers. Many of the SMEs reported an increase in sales made(90%) while 10% reported constant sales, 51% of the SME managers reported an increase in employees whereas 49% reported a constant number of employees. Majority of the SMEs reported an increase in profits(70%) and the minority reported constant profits, most of the SME reported an increase in expenses and 16% reported a reduction in the expenses. 53% of the SMEs reported an improvement in technology and 47% of the SMEs reported constant technology. According to the findings, there was no significant relationship between access to financial services with GD, knowledge of Financial services offered with GD, attitudes of financial Institutions and GD (p>0.05). Therefore no need for further analysis at the multivariate level. On basis of the study findings, following is recommended. The fact that some studies made clearly state that SMEs that have been in business for a long period of time experience growth, but later reach maturity and later start declining therefore more research should be made to find out the time period that it takes a firm to be in every stage from infancy to maturity then decline and so much more. It is possible that by the time I made this research on the SMEs selected they had already reached maturity and that they had started declining.