Micro Enterprise Policy Development : A Developing Country Perspective

This book is on micro enterprise policy development in developing countries, specially Bangladesh. The book focuses that an efficient ME sector is conducive to industrial growth and a flexible industrial structure, which are the cornerstones of a vibrant entrepreneurial economy. The contributions of MEs to the national economy can be measured in terms of some inter-related issues: economic (income generation), social (poverty reduction) and political (wealth redistribution). There is a strong link between entrepreneurship and ED and the impact of entrepreneurship on ED depends on the level of business performance. Economy is considered as an affect for which entrepreneurship is the cause. Thus economic histories of the developed countries show the notion that ED has benefited from widespread large scale entrepreneurial activity. However. DCs have begun to realize the necessity of encouraging entrepreneurship to achieve their ED goals. But. they in reality can't achieve these goals like the developed countries. As a result they need to depend on small scale enterprise development. Despite these recognized importance, DCs face severe problems and challenges in MED. They lack appropriate policies and programmes to promote MEs towards ED. This study critically examines the existing MED Policies and the role of different MEDOs with a view to articulating appropriate policy recommendations. This study employed a qualitative inductive approach. case study strategy and in depth interviews with semi-structured protocols to collect primary data based on phenomenology. A list of respondents from different ME stakeholders were interviewed and interpretative phenomenological analysis technique was used for data analysis. The findings confirm that there are fragmentations and incoherency in existing MEDPs, as a result, they failed to achieve the goals of MED. Overall a favourable entrepreneurial culture to MED is absent in Bangladesh. This book emphasizes on a list of practical recommendations to formulate a coherent and comprehensive MEDP based on solid evidences. Especially, a model for appropriate government intervention to MED and an alternative model for 'interest free ME financing' are proposed. This study hopes that these recommendations will provide appropriate inputs to the policy makers and concerned ME stakeholders in the DCs, particularly Bangladesh and more generally to the MED literature.