1887

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

Executive Summary

Financing SMEs and Entrepreneurs 2024: An OECD Scoreboard provides information on SME financing trends and policies for nearly 50 countries through the end of 2022, including indicators on debt, equity, and financing conditions, as well as enterprise distress data. Data for 2022 are complemented by information available for 2023, along with demand-side information and recent developments in public policy and private initiatives to support SME finance. Taken together, these indicators form a comprehensive framework for policymakers and other stakeholders to evaluate the financing needs of SMEs. The Scoreboard also constitutes a valuable tool to support the design and evaluation of policy measures and to monitor the implications of financial reforms on access to finance and financing conditions for SMEs over time.

English Also available in: Italian

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a Success
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error