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Financing SMEs and Entrepreneurs 2024

An OECD Scoreboard

image of Financing SMEs and Entrepreneurs 2024

Since 2020, a series of shocks to the global economy has had significant impacts on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and entrepreneurs and their access to finance. Most recently, significant inflationary pressures have led to tighter lending conditions, limiting the flow of finance to SMEs and acting as a barrier to investment. Financing SMEs and Entrepreneurs 2024: An OECD Scoreboard monitors SME and entrepreneurship financing trends, conditions and policy developments in close to 50 countries. It documents a strong increase in the cost of SME financing in 2022, alongside a significant decline in SME lending. Equity finance also fell sharply in 2022, after a year of historically high growth in 2021. Women-led and minority-owned businesses, which typically find it more difficult to access venture capital financing, were affected disproportionately. Against this backdrop, the Scoreboard highlights the recent measures governments have taken to support SME access to finance, including finance for the green transition. A continued focus on diversifying financial sources and instruments will be important to meet the different needs of all types of SMEs and entrepreneurs, and enable them to act as an engine of resilient, sustainable and inclusive growth.

English Also available in: French

The Netherlands

The Dutch economy recovered quickly after the initial effects of the COVID-19 crisis, however, in 2022 and 2023, SMEs were challenged by the consequences of the large-scale aggression of Russia against Ukraine and the widespread effect of inflation. Despite these challenges, the need for external financing from SMEs has gradually decreased during recent years. Some trends have continued with banks being still the main channel for SME financing, although their share is becoming relatively smaller compared to alternative sources of financing.

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