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 Periodical article |
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| Title: | South Africa's SMME policy: the challenge remains |
| Author: | Mmakola, David |
| Year: | 2009 |
| Periodical: | Africanus (ISSN 0304-615X) |
| Volume: | 39 |
| Issue: | 2 |
| Pages: | 66-81 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | South Africa |
| Subjects: | small enterprises economic policy |
| Abstract: | This paper argues that the small, medium and micro-enterprise (SMME) policy in South Africa, revised in 2005, faces the same challenges that confronted the original 1995 policy and accompanying implementing institutions. It first traces the original policy, outlining its tenets, objectives and implementation arrangements. Next, the paper assesses the policy's performance. The assessment focuses on the impact of the regulatory and policy environment, the development objectives that guided the original policy, and the performance of institutions established to implement the policy. It is concluded that the impact of the policy environment, especially the economic restructuring of the mid 1990s, still requires further, detailed studies. Moreover, the development objectives are based on problematic assumptions that confuse key stakeholders, tend to contradict one another, and are assessed too soon after implementation has commenced without due appreciation of the complexity of the development process. The policy has also suffered from gross underutilization of SMME programmes by SMMEs, lack of coordination between public sector role players across the three spheres of government, limited interface between public and private institutions involved in SMME development work, and the limited voice of SMMEs in both policy formulation and implementation. Bibliogr., notes, sum. [Journal abstract] |
