By Mona Alam Eldin
Small and medium enterprises have been considered the backbone of the the Promising economies in most countries. The government of Egypt gave a great interest to small and medium enterprises as a part of its short and long term strategy for the development of economy in Egypt , as
It is considered as a key opening doors to huge projects , with great sharing in the Egyptian economy due to their flexibility and quick response to all changes in the local and international market through its contribution at the investment of local savings needed in all developing economics. Also helps in reducing the amount of losses and directing the investments totally to the production process.
The Social Fund for Development was established in 1998 as the main public player and policy coordinator for the
Micro, small and medium enterprises to Contribute in developing the Egyptian economy by its programmes to poverty reduction through improving access to basic services , enhancing economic opportunities and reducing the vulnerability of the poor and sharing with all other development players, submitting all the financial requirements
(grants, loans, financial and management support ) to enable them to expand and improve their services delivery and working always to change the society for the better through reducing unemployment and creating new jobs and maintain existing jobs serving the economy.
In 2016, The social fund for Development achieved good results in micro, small and medium enterprises with 42.959, and the total no of micro enterprises is 47.295 and 85,523 of employment chances .
Also it gave a great interest to woman project especially in Rural places with a ratio reached to 26%. For rural women who can now to sell their hand made handicrafts in Europe .
A lot of successful stories of micro, small and medium enterprises achieved success , but we are looking for more development to achieve its active role in the Egyptian economy to reduce poverty and to share the challenges of unemployment problem .
Major challenges facing small and medium sized enterprises :
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_ Lack of finance
_ Lack of comprehensive database
_ Insufficient use of information technology.
_ Lack of managerial training and experience.
_ Inadequate education and skills.
_ High technological charges.
_ Lack of sufficient market information
_ Lack of access to long term credit.
_ Undeveloped sales channels.
To face these challenges  a clear network  should be made when launching these enterprises,
By providing training centres offering all managerial and  technical courses and building a strong management team learning and sharing the knowledge . Also it is essential to invest in training employees to operate their organisations more efficiently with a proper communication between top management and employees to maintain trust and motivate staff .  Also we can adapt many remarkable learned lessons and policy implications applied by countries succeeded to overcome these challenges as Malysia and Iran .
Looking forward to achieve more in micro, small and medium enterprises and to face our challenges to achieve
Our expected success to Egyptian economy .
