TA Loan 2150-BAN: Small and Medium Enterprises Sector Development Programme (SMESDP) – Component 6: Integrated SME Database Development

The most important objectives before these nation-wide sample surveys (NWSS), to be conducted in two phases, were: (i) to harness an expert and scientific characterization of Bangladesh’s Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) involving analysis on both the supply-side as well as the demand-side; (ii) to characterize Bangladesh’s SMEs in terms of their magnitude, composition, characteristics and performance; (iii) to identify, in specific terms, the supply-side and the demand-side of Bangladesh’s SME development; (iv) to identify the positive and negative drivers of productivity, profitability, employment generation and poverty reduction; (v) to identify the micro-economic aspects of the SME growth process itself, with an accent on causal determinants of the intensity of the use of services with public-goods characteristics of a kind that PRSP is focally concerned with; (vi) the identification of a “priority core” comprising six to eight from among the eleven “booster industries” cited by the report of the SME Task Force and then enshrined by the SME Policy Strategies 2005 in the interest of greater operational focus in future implementation of SME Policy Strategies by the Government of Bangladesh; (vii) to assess the character and effect of the existing structure of competitiveness between SMEs on the one hand, and large enterprises in Bangladesh on the other; (viii) to assess the forward and backward linkages radiating from the process of growth of SMEs themselves, and the impact on the allocation of resources by firms, including hiring of workers disaggregated by gender; (ix) firm up estimates about the levels and characteristics of demand for the final goods produced by SMEs.