ENTREPRENEURIAL FINANCING AND GROWTH OF SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTREPRISES A STUDY OF SELECTED SMEs IN ABEOKUTA, NIGERIA

Abstract

This study investigates entitled entrepreneurial financing and growth of small and medium enterprises in selected SMEs in Nigeria.  Entrepreneurial financing is the independent variable which is measured through bank credit, equity financing and crowding funding while the dependent variable is growth of small and medium enterprise which is measured through SMEs growth, market share, and Smes net profit margin . The researchers have employed quantitative research design. To collect primary data well-structured and cross sectional questionnaires were distributed to 109 owner/managers/employees of SMEs from 240 populations consisting of registered SMEs, by using simple random sampling techniques. To achieve the objectives of the study, three hypotheses were formulated and tested from the structure of the research questions. Pearson correlation and linear regression were used to analyze the data with the help of SPSS.  The findings show that bank credit has significant effect on Smes growth with p value (0.000) which is less than 0.005, equity financing has high positive relationship with market share with P value of (0.000) which is less than 0.005, also crowding funding has positive relationship on Smes net profit margin with P value of (0.000) which is less than 0.005, this implies that entrepreneurial financing plays a huge role on new ventures in Abeokuta South LGA. Recommendations were made to SMEs and Government ought to, as a matter of criticality, help planned business visionaries to have admittance to the public purse to back them up and provide them easy access to fundamental data identifying with business opportunities, present day innovation, crude materials, business sector, plant and hardware which would empower them to diminish their working expense as this study discovered the insignificance of accessibility to fund a major problem.