| Practice area: | Finance |
|---|---|
| Client: | Internal document |
| Published: | 7 December, 2022 |
| Keywords: | quantitative analysis SMEs finance report |
SME & Entrepreneurship Working Paper No. 1
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and into 2021, SMEs have experienced challenging economic circumstances due to lockdowns and social distancing measures, supply chain constraints, and a tight labour market.
This paper investigates the relative importance of various problems that SMEs have faced in the recovery period following the COVID-19 pandemic, recent trends in the importance of these issues, as well as the types of businesses more likely to acutely experience these problems.
Key findings:
- The four most important problems experienced by EU-27 SMEs in the recovery period of the COVID-19 pandemic are the availability of skilled staff or experienced managers, finding customers, the costs of production or labour, and ‘other’ problems not included in the standardized list.
- SMEs with healthy cashflow were generally less likely to acutely experience a majority of the issues compared to SMEs with cashflow problems.
- Sector also appears to be a strong predictor, with SMEs operating in the services and trade sectors being respectively more and less likely to view a majority of problems as extremely problematic.
- Certain innovators were more likely to consider a majority of problems as extremely important.
- SMEs owned by public shareholders were less likely to view a majority of the problems as extremely important.