Model for SME Sector Development
By Professor Saburo Kameyama, Faculty of Commerce, Chuo University,
Saburo Kameyama, Faculty of Commerce, Chuo University,
E-mail: kameyama@ tamacc.chuo-u.ac.jp
Hidenori Kobayashi, Faculty of Policy Studies, Chuo University,
E-mail: kobaken0@ fps.chuo-u.ac.jp
Toru Suetake, Arthur Andersen, Tokyo
E-mail: tohru.suetake@ jp.artjurandersen.com
Abstract
SME: Small and Medium Enterprise sector development is one of the key issues in external
cooperation by developed countries to developing countries recently. Development of SME sector is
important for strengthening the leading industries with the assistance of SME as support industries. In
addition, SME development is the future candidate of leading industry because every leading
enterprise has had the experience of starting their business as a SME. The future of the industry is
dependent on the development of SME. For the labor market, SME development is also an important
issue because it employs the labor force and offers wages to workers. In those terms, development of
the SME sector could be not only the key issue of industry development but also socio-economic
development for every country.
The Japanese government developed many tools for SME development and has been quite successful
with their performance during the past several decades. However, according to our experiences,
although incentive tools for development of the SME sector have been used effectively, there are
some difficulties that mainly come from the circumstantial nature surrounding SME. Basically the
SME sector has a complex nature and it is the reason why the SME sector can be sustained
We are trying to develop a standard SME sector model and examine the effectiveness of incentive
tools for providing powerful decision making support tools for industry development planning staff of
govemments.
Key word: SME, industry, macro economy
1, Introduction.
SME sector development is one of the key issues for many countries both for advanced countries
including USA, JAPAN, and many East European counties, but also for developing counties including
Indonesia, the Philippines and China.
From December 1999 to March 2000, and May to June 2000, we conducted a series of studies on
SME sector development policy and policy structure including policy tools in developing countries
and international assistance agencies. We visited multi-lateral intemational assistance agencies of the
World Bank, IDBA, EBRD and the Asian Development Bank. We visited bilateral development
assistance agencies of USAID and JICA, JBIC, and the Ministry of International Trade and Industry in
Japan. We visited the developing countries of Bulgaria, Poland, the Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia,
Laos PDR, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and two municipal governments of China
(Shenyang and Hanzong). We also visited and studied OECD on their SME sector development.
Based on those studies, we first categorized SME development policies of those countries and then
developed a standard SME sector model to check the effectiveness of those SME development tools
and polices on their developing scenarios.
2. Objectives of SME sector development
Based on those studies we found that objectives or aims of SME development policy may briefly be
put into the four following categories:
1) For creation as industry itself: There are countries which do not have modern industry, typically in
the least developed counties such as Laos PDR and Cambodia. In those countries, almost all
enterprise is micro enterprise and SME are rare. The first key issue for those countries is creation
of enterprise itself. It is also true in China for basically, there was no private enterprise and all
enterprises were state owned. However, creation of pure private SME is an essential issue for
China for smooth implementation of privatization.
2) For creation as support industry: There are countries which do not have strong support industry,
typically in newly developed countries in South East Asia such as Indonesia, the Philippines and
Malaysia. They have several large intemational enterprises and also many multi-national
enterprises who invest in those countries. However, industry structure is not so strong due mainly
to problems coming from their supply-chain structures. Industry development policies of those
countries focus on mainly tie in network between leading industry and SME as support industry.
3) Industry sector reform: Industry sector reform is another key issue in every country. China is facing
the privatization of its state owned enterprises. They need SME to absorb the excess labor forces
from SOE. Many East European countries are trying to change the industry structure which
formerly focused on non-efficient heavy industry to balanced industrial structure with increased
focus on light industry and modem industry. Every country has keen interest on development of IT
industry and has or is developing many incentive tools including direct finance mechanism. IT
industry may be thought of as a magic box which can quickly tum on the industry of a country
even in the least developed countries such as Laos PRD and Cambodia. This may also be true for
advanced countries such as USA for they always need new leading industries and SME sector
development is first stage. With SME sector development, they may find several new industries
that could be the candidates of leading industry in the next generation.
4) Labor force absorption: SME absorbs the over capacity of labor market effectively. Many countries
including China and developing countries could not handle labor issues mostly over capacity of old
economy and shortage of new economy. Especially, China and former communist countries have
been transferring state owned enterprises into privately owned ones and have faced unemployment
problems. SME sector development is a keen issue for them to absorb such unemployment.
However, the problem of setting the SME sector development policy is mixed with those aims and
can not be clearly simplified. On the other hand, policy tools are always simplified and a limitation is
set. For this limitation, goverment prepares as many tools as possible and must use them with
combination. Therefore, we considered the tools standard framework is very important before starting
to develop the standard SME sector model.
3. SME Basic law
The existence of a basic law for SME is important for give to establish the framework of sector
development. Normally, in under SME basic law, determined size of SME and mapped related laws,
and regulations policy tools are conducted by executing agencies. Although there are arguments of
over the necessity of SME basic laws and some countries insist on covering their industry
development laws or commerce laws, however, we find the existing suitable SME basic law is a key
issues for makes smooth and effective SME sector development. Although without SME basic law,
some countries such as Malaysia could conduct SME sector development smoothly and successfully
but having rich and varied SME sector development tools and consistency of SME sector development
policy are the reasons of success in these countries. Especially, long-term consistency of SME sector
development policy itself works as a kind of SME basic law. With the use of the long-term policy
consistency, it may be said that they create tacit SME basic law. SME basic law is very useful to
operate and extend SME sector development in terms of giving the core policy framework. For this
reason, many countries including Thailand and China recently decided to establish the SME basic law.
Normally, in SME basic law, the following items are determined:
- Determination of SME. Normally SME determines the number of employees and/or sales amount.
From studies of 12 counties, we noticed that the number of employees of SME is around below 200
to 300. Also many countries use three categories of SME, into three, micro-enterprise, small
enterprise and medium size enterprise. Micro enterprise is normally under 10 employees and
operates mainly as family business.
- Framework of incentive policy tools. Basic idea of industry development is free competition.
However, every government will try to give some incentive mechanism, some of them are for setting
a level playing field and others are for determining the roles and responsibilities of related
government agencies. Also determining the relationship with other related laws and regulations pre
and post established.
4. Tools for SME sector development
Japan may be one of the successful countries in SME sector development. 99% of Japanese
companies are SME and this SME sector hired 78% of the labor forces, shared 50% of shipping and
sales trade in total trade in Japan during 1998 to 1999. Of course, the situations of almost all countries
are like that. More than 90% of the companies are SME in all countries.
Table 1: Category of SME sector incentive tools.
Category Tools
A) Finance Lending and guarantee scheme for SME
Al)
A2) Direct finance (Investment and venture capital)
A3) Taxation for SME and incentive tax
B) Management Reform B1) Management reform
B2) Creation of new business
B3) Creation of new technology
C) Strengthening of Management C1) Management resource
Infrastructure C2) Cooperative
C3) Industry integration
C4) Commerce integration
C5) Distribution industry
C6) Labor issue
C7) Fair trade
C8) Support Industry
C9) Government procurement
D) Environment
E) Micro enterprise
For development of SME sector, Japanese government, the Ministry of Economy and Industry
(former Ministry of Intemational Trade and Industry) has been developing many incentive tools. The
idea and concept of the SME development policy by the Ministry of Economy and Finance may be
categorized as follows. This is one of example for SME sector development tools.
A) Finance: Finance is a fundamental issue for every SME. There are two financial schemes, direct
(investment) and non-direct (lending). In non-direct financial scheme for SME, several
govemments have funds for SME or goverment banks have provided funds for SME. Some
countries like Japan and Malaysia have many lending programs for SME and settle the lending
amount and interest rate, guarantee scheme for leading SME sector development and/or industry
sector development. Also for non-direct financial scheme, guarantee scheme by government is
very important for many SME does not have enough mortgages. Several governments have in such
govemment guarantee schemes for lending to SME. Typically, goverment established the fund
for guarantee and this government owned fund provides guarantee to the bank for SME whom
want to borrow money from that bank. However, many international assistance agencies including
IMF and the World Bank is not affirmative on non-direct financial schemes by government for it’s
against economic principles of free competition in the free market.
Incentive tax also has been a very useful tools for SME development for a long time. It could be
effectively control the self-development power of SME. However, many developing countries do
not have strong taxation capabilities in central goverment and some of SME could escape from
the tax. Also, many international assistance agencies do not agree to set incentive taxes for it is
against economic principles of level playing field. For these reasons, many countries shift to an
indirect tax system which gets government incomes from such as value added tax.
B) Management Reform: Management system and structure of SME is very primitive stage or not
modernized in many cases. In case of Japan, government sets three assistance components in
management reform for SME. First one is management reform itself and provides technical and
financial assistance to introduce a modern management system such as transfer from family
business or small cooperation organization to modern corporate or limited company. Second
scheme is assistance to create new business. Many countries also have in this new business
creation assistance scheme as venture capital scheme and give financial support or tax incentives.
Third assistance scheme is new technology development. SBIR of USA is very famous in this
scheme. Other countries also have in such schemes and provide material, testing facilities and
tools, equipment, researchers and experts as advisors, technical matching services and human
resources matching services.
C) Strengthening of management infrastructure: This is composed of nine tools groups.
C1) Management resource: This category of tools purpose to establish enough management resources.
Shortage of management resources including human resources is a key issues for strengthening
SME management infrastructure. In many countries, government established the SME center and
provides consulting services and matching services. Japan has a unique system to certify SME
consultants with government certified SME consultants and also provide consulting services by
those certified SME consultants for improving management of SME in technical, financial,
marketing and training area. Also in this category, there are tools for assisting training to manager
and employees in the area of technology, accounting and management. Tools to assist to export,
saving energy and environment issues are also in this category.
C2) Cooperative: Establishing the cooperative unit by SME is another scheme for strengthening the
SME organization. Japanese government assists to establish the cooperative unit by integrating
SME and then transforming it in to a normal cooperative or limited company.
C3) Industry integration: Industry integration has two characteristics for SME development. One is
economy economic development in local areas and the other is strengthening management
infrastructure by integration of management resources.
C4) Commerce integration: Commerce integration is another scheme and also have has two
characteristics same in common with industry integration. One is economic development in
commerce area with through adjustment of large-scale retail shops such as department stores and
super markets. Two typical trends happen in Japan related to this commerce integration. With
acceleration of rural type large scale shopping malls, which mainly focus on the customer coming
by car, old commerce areas near the railway terminal become unpopulated. Also large-scale retail
shopping stores abolish the branch stores in the old commercial areas due to the for recession and
cut low profit stores. Revitalization of old commerce areas or re-development of former commerce
areas is one of the key issues for this commerce integration policy. The other issue in commerce is,
over population and unpopulated issues. Unbalance of population and domestic immigration
problems cause big gaps of in commerce areas. Some adjustment is necessary with re-development
and re-vitalization of commerce areas. A nother is strengthening SME management infrastructure.
C5) Distribution industry: Distribution industry also has faces big problems especially as the world
tums into the e-commerce and the IT ages. Once, distribution industry had roles of finance, stock
adjustment and information providing to both supplier and retailer and those roles make create
some value added value to this industry. However, e-commerce changed the situation and lean
production has made those roles of the distribution industry less necessary on those roles by
distribution industry. In the case of Japan, government established the assistance tools for
integration of SME distributors and SME retailers, create d unique and advanced SME retailers
and transformed it in to a much more efficient and effective system linkage between distributors
and retailers.
C6) Labor issue: Labor issues are one of top the main issues for SME. Protection and management of
the labor market is the responsibility on the Ministry of Labor in Japan. MITI in Japan rather
focuses on training for employees or encourages the improvement of capability and establish
promotes the stability of the labor market. Other countries rather only focus on training and human
resources matching services and lack on labor market stabilization methods to take balance of the
supply side and demand side.
C7) Fair trade or trade fairness: SME especially SME in support industry have a handicap on trade
with large companies. Many govemments have trade faimess laws and regulations but Japan has a
specific one on trade between large companies and SME in support industry. Another scheme is to
develop the support industry with fair trade. Although Japan has an anti- monopoly law but it is not
specific for SME, the same as other countries.
C8) Support Industry: Strengthening of support industry is a big characteristic of Japanese style by of
SME development of Japanese style. Characteristics or system of companies is different with
between Japanese style and other countries, especially Europe and A merica. Japanese
manufacturing companies rather have a system composed to support industrial manufacturers and
make clear roles and responsibility. It looks like a pyramid structure. Therefore, big and leading
companies leave the parts manufacturing to support industry manufacturers and focus on R&D,
marketing and assembling. That is the reason that strengthening support industry is a key issues on
not only SME sector development but also strengthening leading industry in Japan. In Europe and
America, big manufacturers, they rather want to make all parts by themselves, so called one stop
manufacturing. However, this style of manufacturing has changed even in Europe and America
and they now choose to purchase parts from support industry manufacturers. Developing countries
such as Indonesia, the Philippines and even Malaysia, have established a local support industry and
created strong linkage and ties in with big, leading manufacturers and sometimes with multi-
national manufacturers whom invested in their countries. This, is a key success factor for their
industry development.
C9) Government procurement assists SME: To help and assist SME sector development, some
countries such as Japan, Poland and Bulgaria have a system to purchase material and goods from
SME.
D) Environment: Environment assistance tools in this category do not have narrow meaning in Japan.
It includes protection and prevention from bankruptcy, disaster and socio-economic structure
adjustment. Protection and prevention of bankruptcy is a kind of safety net for SME. In Japan, they
prepare lawyer and arbitrator in all branch offices of Japan Chamber of Commerce and provide
arbitration services. Also for prevention of bankruptcy by bankruptcy of trade partner or supplier,
emergency government finance scheme is prepared. Also another emergency finance scheme and
insurance scheme for natural disasters or accidents are prepared. With these social safety nets,
MITI tries to forward smoothly industrial structure adjustment. Other countries have rather narrow
assisting tools only focusing on environmental issues such as transfer of raw material to green
products or recycling.
E) Micro enterprise: SME is clearly separated from micro enterprises. Many countries are also
separate with SME and micro enterprise but some countries still put them into the same category.
However, separation is very important. In many countries and intemational assistance agencies,
SME development policy focuses not only on development for SME sector itself but also on micro
enterprises, policy with these characteristics is therefore a social safety net.
SME development tools may also be put into two categories, one to assist and give incentives to SME
in Japan. These polices aim to strengthen the SME management and encourage them to grow to large
and international enterprises. It may be said focus is on SME itself or inner structure strengthening.
Second one is tools categorized as the industrial structure adjustment and gives suitable space for
SME on their survival and chance to grow. Tools of many other countries are not so clearly separate
on strengthening of SME itself and industry structure adjustment.
We have studied SME development in several developing counties and also policy of intemational
assistance agencies from 1999 to 2000. From this study, we found that the structure of SME sector
development tools in Japan is the most advanced and well prepared. For this reason, we decided to use
a standard policy tools framework similar to the Japanese one. There are not any non-categorized
SME policy tools in this framework nor excess frameworks. Another framework such as the balanced
score card became popular. However, the balanced score card framework only focuses on
strengthening the management infrastructure of SME and does not consider much on industry
structure adjustment and micro enterprise social safety net.
5. Scenario of SME development
There are mainly 5 types of SME development scenarios at the initial stage. Many advanced
countries take one or several initial scenarios for success of SME sector development. Surrounding
these scenarios or combination of scenarios for industrial development, many incentive tools are used
for accelerating the development to shift low level technology products to much value added products
and export oriented products.
Table 2: Initial stage
Type Characteristics
1 | Import replacement Start with replacement of agriculture related import items with
domestic products such as in the area of agriculture tools, chemical
fertilizer, and agro-chemicals. Then shift to construction materials
and equipment such as cement, iron bars, and galvanized iron
sheets. Then shift to light industrial products such as soap and
textiles and lastly shift to rather heavy industry such as plastic
products. Many countries have used this scenario with success
including Korea and Japan.
2 | Raw material replacement | Start with replacement of export of raw material to products using
raw material in the country. Examples, cotton exporting country
shifts to export of textiles or cotton cloth. Also sub-industrial
development such as machines for spinning and growth of light and
heavy industry. Successful example is, India which went from
cotton exporting countty to textile exporting country.
3 | Integration Integrate some specific sub industry and increase the brand value
and fame with establishment of the an industrial estate or industrial
zone and develop a large scale supply chain network. For example,
Tubame city of Japan started to focus on manufacturing of
tableware and established the brand and fame. Same as Silicon
Valley in USA and many successful examples in the world.
4 | Castle town type Support industries are developed surrounding one big firm or plant
and expand the industry. Successful examples are many in Japan
such as Toyota city, many subsidiaries and part manufacturing
enterprises operate business surrounding Toyota or Hitachi city.
Many subsidiary companies and related companies were
established around Hitachi.
5 | Ohta Ward type Itis a new type industry development scenario. Establish a high-
tech SME network and develop the industry within the network.
Such as Taiwan personal computer maker which found a way to
manufacture personal computers with procurement of network
from another part manufacturing maker in Taiwan.
Another development scenario starts with agribusiness and industrialization. Along with these
development courses, SME sector was also developed to accompany industrialization.
1) Import replacement: Import replacement not only focuses on SME development scenario but has
been a typical success scenario for many countries. Strategy of replacement is very important and
nomnally high custom duties are set for import items to protects domestic products. By domestic
industry protection, goverment also gives incentive tax for export and increases the ration of
export items using raw material domestically. However, recent free trade movement (such as
WTO) makes it difficult to follow this strategy. Developing countries could not set high custom
duties on import items. Therefore, to avoid violating WTO mules, strategy to assist establishment
of domestic manufacturers that produce import replacement goods and supplier link with those
manufacturers, and then strengthening management and technical capability and assist marketing
could be one of the choices. Second important key success factor is combination and order
(prioritization) of developing sub industry. Normally, replacement with simple and low technology
products in first stage. But recently, instead replacement with agricultural machines, agricultural
chemicals, fertilizer in first stage but start with replacement of construction materials such as
cement, iron pipe and iron plate for linking with development of agriculture infrastructure such as
building of irrigation systems.
2) Raw material replacement: Also many developing countries takes this strategy. Not only export of
Taw materials produced in the country but also shift to replacing this raw material with products
using this raw material. Typically, cotton, crude oil and natural gas producing countries take in
such strategy. Government provides technical support and assists new products development and
establishes the manufacturing company. Also along with this assistance, establishment and
development of supply chain is very important. However, there are several unsuccessful cases.
Textile industry in India started with replacement of cotton. However, they could not take price
leadership in the world market and could not increase the export of both cotton and textiles as
expected for they failed to improve the quality of their product, mainly. For agriculture countries,
improvement of quality itself is a key issues but some countries such as Jamaica have been
successful in to establishing brand on agriculture products. (Blue Mountain coffee of Jamaica is
one of those success cases.) Ohta prefecture of Japan is another success case of this strategy. They
established one famous product in each municipality as brand and also used strategies for
establishing the total brand image of Ohta prefecture combined with each municipal product.
3) Integration: Integration of SME is one of the typical industrial development strategies taken by
many countries. Integration makes scale merits on supply chain and bargain power for
procurement, sales and incentive negotiation with local and central goverment. The design of
integration depends on the nature and characteristics of the people and nations. Goverment
initiatives make rather single category industry integration but large scale such as textile and spine
industry, metal and machine, and electronics. Private initiative integration makes rather small scale
and mixed industry. Large-scale single industry integration by government initiatives has been
thought of as a useful solution for development and acceleration of SME development, however,
recently the theory rather focuses on the relationship or network within the integration and stresses
how to create added value on the manufacturing and logistics. Less developed countries sometimes
do not have a strong industry sector at all. In such countries, they start to integrate handy craft
industry with cooperation or tie in with tourism industry and make small souvenirs. Then make
some sort of brand image such as Ubdo of Bali Island, Indonesia that established the fame of
woodcuts. However, this is only the first step of the strategy and development toward next stage of
industrialization is key issue for SME development.
4) Castle town type: Natural integration around big companies that create their own subsidiary
company for support of their industry, or gather suppliers and distributors and develop the
formation of a full set supply chain in one city. SME could have a lot of merit to get orders and
technical consultation from big companies. Also for big companies at the head of this supply
chain, they have merit to get one stop shop services of supplies from subsidiary companies and
companies in support industry. There are so many success cases in Japan such as Toyota city
famous for gathering all Toyota related and subsidiary companies in Toyota city and its suburb
area. However, there are some unsuccessful cases such as Hitachi City. They could establish one
big supply chain around Hitachi Manufacturing Co., that is one of the big manufacturing
companies in Japan. But the recession shrunk the business of this company and related SME faced
a difficult situation for they had too much strong linkage with this company. The same situation
happened in several castle towns including Nissan, another big carmaker in Japan and several ships
yard companies in Kitakyushu, Japan. The same thing happened in USA in Detroit. Shifting to
next generation industry and conducting suitable industry structure adjustment by government is
always a key issue for this type of industry development.
5) Ohta Ward type: This type of industrial development is rather new. Establish the information
network of SME and work as virtual manufacturing company. In IT industry, many governments
are eager to take in this type of strategy to accompany integration. Integration rather focuses on
gathering SME into one place but this type is focuses on establishing an information network and
acts as one big virtual company, not considering the physical location so much. There are so many
successes stories especially in the IT industry. For example, IT SME in Taiwan established an
information network and arranged the parts or orders within the network for success to win the big
contract from PC manufacturing. Ohka ward of Japan is famous for integrating many high skilled
SME manufacturing companies and was successful in getting orders which need high skill
manufacturing technology for they can find any kind of technology within the network and arrange
the order. Silicon Valley of USA is also of this type. However, establishing an intelligent linkage is
a key success factor especially for SME in IT area. Success of Silicon Valley comes from the
linkage of university and research institutes in California. Also success of Taiwan PC
manufactures comes from speedy custom systems for import and export. Linkage around the
network is very important too. Governments must consider the shape of the future network so
govemment must take initiatives in some part and leave others for private initiatives.
Other SME sector development scenarios are focused on so called development processes. Normally
less developed countries have a self-sufficient agriculture economy. They must start first with handy
craft type manufacturing. Then perform replacement of import goods or export raw material. With this
so-called self-development of domestic industry, they can then encourage foreign investment such as
invite establishment of factories or subsidiary companies of multi- national companies. Then make
linkage or tie in with those companies as leading companies and domestic companies. Also
development of support industry is a key success factor in this stage. Last stage is make area-trade-
network or free trade zones and accelerates international trade to increase exports.
With strengthening of SME management infrastructure, it is important to make strong SME that have
only one unique manufacturing technology or top market share in niche market. In case of Japan, there
are so many strong companies that have top market share in the world with only one unique top class
manufacturing technology.
6. Model for SME sector development
There should be two characteristics in SME sector development model of SD. One is the management
of SME itself. Many political tools work for strengthening of the SME management infrastructure
itself. Other side is structure adjustment. Also many political tools try to lead the sector development
direction such as accelerating new and potential industry such as IT and conduct industrial adjustment
with the other hand. Therefore, SME sector model should have two characteristics. In the SD model,
we solve this situation with a two-step approach that starts with development of a micro model for
evaluating SME sector development tools that focus on strengthening of their management
infrastructure and then build macro model and evaluate tools for structure adjustment in the second
step. Micro model sets factors that only make impacts on SME itself and gives structure adjustment
factors as exogenous variables. The macro model, which may be called socio-economic model and
sets factors related mainly for SME itself sets as exogenous variables and gives the results of
simulation by micro model.
7. Micro level sector model.
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tation to
ePISME
dvertisement
formance
Market share Quality of products
Macro economy Marketing
Income for SME
sal esi #> Expenditure of SME
Market sizé
Number of nitch
markets Raw material:
Tax incentives
IR payment,
Performance of
—— t Guarantee stheme
"A \ performance Training
Organizational Leaning loss by
learning retirement
Chart 1: Outline of SME micro model
SME are complex and easily fall into chaotic management situation. This chaotic behavior of SME
has been studied by H. Kobayahi (1997).
On the SME micro level sector model, we decided to avoid this complex behavior and made the
model rather simple. There are already developed so many models in this world. This model is
basically same structure and character with those models but eliminated elements of manufacturing
and procurement.
In this model, we focused on cash flow and checked the impact of many SME sector development
tools mainly given as incentives for SME with relation to finance, marketing, technology
improvement and training which describes a hypothetical situation and the simulation results give
great detail. Especially in training field, we focused on accumulation of organizational knowledge and
its impact on technology and marketing with their strategy. In other words, SME sector development
tools which give incentives of SME create impact through strategy parameters. Also, strategy
parameters made impact on the business area and market share interactively. Based on this model, we
set the macro economy factor that gives 3 years cycle wave with gradual increase of 5% and flat (no
increase) to market size. Delay happened between direct or indirect finance and the investment to
facility. Also delay is set between investment to facility to technology improvement, technology
improvement to the quality of products, customer reputation to SME and market share, tax incentives
and expenditure, interest and expenditure, training and organizational leaming. In order to make it
simple, we set the interest including retum of indirect finance.
7-1) Hypothesis of SME 1: Financial assistance
In many countries, governments have incentive tools to give some direct or indirect financial
assistance or guarantee scheme including tax incentives to SME. However, to give financial incentives
to SME is criticized by many economist of the world including the World Bank and IMF for these
government activities are harmful for free competitive market oriented playing field.
Is it truly harmful for SME development? We have conducted simulation and check the effectiveness
of financial assistance to SME and found that financial assistance is always helpful for the
management of SME. In this model, we handled direct finance for increasing the income but gave no
load to expenditure. Indirect finance also increased the income and increased the expenditure (interest)
with delay. Direct finance had much more impact toward cash flow than indirect finance for indirect
finance made a big impact toward expenditure. We handled the tax incentives also in the same
manner, decrease the expenditure with delay. Even this tax incentive effect for cash flow management
of SME was useful. However, problems occurred with delay. SME has always secured finance, that
makes it difficult to keep balance between income and expenditure when investment and payment
happens. For maintain profitability, SME may have to invest in technology development and
productivity improvement, but these investments give financial load in later stage. Quick and timely
finance can help and increase the profitability of SME but if too much delay, SME may face
bankruptcy for shortage of cash. Compared with large scale enterprises, SME has small capacity to
bear the fluctuation of cash flow. It may no need to be said that this fact is matched by the same
observation in many countries. As the conclusion of simulation, whether direct, indirect or tax
incentives financial assistance is useful and many criticism of financial assistance comes from
institutional structure of the government or government organization. Added to the inefficiency of
government financial institutions, corruption and unfairness of financial lending or guarantee schemes
are a problem. We carefully checked the criticism of govemment finance but could not find any
evidence for negative effects of finance to SME itself. All criticisms are only mentioned mechanism
and institutes of financial assistance.
7-2) Hypothesis of SME 2: Impact of the knowledge based economy
We also tried to check the impact of knowledge management and impact of the knowledge store on
the organization. Maybe that is the reason why model structure for retirement decreases the storage of
knowledge and decreases the performance coming from training, we think knowledge seems to be less
impacted compared with other elements such as financial assistance or marketing assistance. In the
observation, many governments give training chances to the employee of SME, from handicraft type
technique to accounting and management techniques. I myself have been working for development of
such technical transfer institution for many developing countries but could not feel so successful.
There are arguments that the government should focus on assistance to basic skill development or
advanced skill. Recent trends and external assistance by multilateral and bilateral donor agencies
rather want to focus on advanced skill such as MBA course development with cooperation of
universities and technology institutes. Also it may be related that many developing countries rather
want to focus on IT and advanced technology oriented industry development with venture capital
investment style and they need skill for management more than basic accounting and management
skills or primitive low technology skills development. In this rather simple primitive SME model, we
could not confirm the behavior and impact of skills development but rather got a rough idea.
7-3) Hypothesis of SME 3: Impact of marketing assistance
Many govemments have official or non official marketing assistance to SME, such as the chamber of
commerce and industry that gives market information and the government have exhibitions to promote
SME and their products. Maybe this also comes from the structure of the model but as conclusion,
profit of SME depends on the market share or market growth. Assistance of marketing is only useful
when market share and/or market size is increased in this model. This may also match our observation
for many SME in other countries.
8. Macro level sector model.
Macro model is a kind of socio-economic model and we developed two kinds of macro model. First
macro model focused on industry sector and evaluated the impact of structure adjustment. We focused
on accumulated GDP and how structure adjustment policy works and makes impact on GDP.
Structure adjustment promotes productivity and demand from industry sector. The strength of linkage
between SME and each sector are given as SME ratios. The basic data of ratio is calculated from the
statistics of Japanese goverment. We use this model to check the other macro model which is shown
as chart 3.
Imports
Export
Outputs from
sapaees agriculture for
agiiculture sector oar
‘Outputs from Syicult
sector for
Input age ‘orn
seco om indy ‘lar ct —
sector ‘ecor
outputs fom ogadury consumption
Soe oye
Tnputs to agriculture sol
soc omgevies nigh tad
= wr fpr domestt
confimpton
ang
nds sc
outputs rom
industy sector fr
Inputs tins aa, ‘port
aaa ek sector arp from in
‘sour for aig
‘ibe nay aia seston
secortom siviees PO SS ape tinea Fouts fro jedustsy
sector toma ioe reson sector for sefyfce sector
ato [SME industry | ssi tar i
wees sectof foy domestic
Impbitto er tomer sr to tom nay ome ‘GDP
sex
‘tps fom
Inpas to servi soto? Services Services set fy
from agdculnre eter sector export
‘Outputs fom serfs
= ‘sodorfor aggre
Inpatsosevie YC Tas UED 3 sector
secorfrom indsty ee
‘sector ‘trod ggricultare ISME services ns Ton sev" ‘Outputs fron} services
sean for pst
tom et
agus ge GE SE Tardy als from sevices
‘omy a sector for domestic
‘consumption
Chart 2: Outline of macro model for check the SME portion
Second macro model is SME sector-model and we focused on major sub industries and how impact
was effected with the change of components. In this model, we looked closely at the impact of
industry adjustment to major sub industry group. To make things simple, we only considered agri-
process products, textiles, machines and electronic products related to export and could change export
ratio. Also, we simulated the development stage with change of the light industry ratio and the heavy
industry ratio. Finance and utility worked as accelerators of productivity to each sub industry sector.
To check the linkage between multi national companies and domestic companies, we used export
ratio. It may actually not exactly describe the linkage of multi national companies and domestic
companies in the domestic market but we did not have suitable statistic data to know the actual trade
between multi national companies and domestic SME within domestic market but many governments
have export statistic data of SME sector.
Textile industry perfomance
{improvement by integration
indicator
Hotel and
restaurant/retail
Input from
agriculture sector o> Agiiprocess
Domestic
‘consumption
OK
Ss Industy SME
hs production
Finance 74 ZA
<> Export
TT new venture ratio.
Textile export ray
IT utility TT /software
Company li ge indictor —— tom Feeney
Electronic indbstry
performance improvement by ‘Macnine export yatio
Integration indipator
TT/Software export ratio
Machine industry perforiiance
‘improvement by integration
indicator
Chart 3: Outline of macro model for SME industry sub sector
8-1) Hypothesis of macro model 1: Structure adjustment
Is structure adjustment policy which rapidly changes the share of agriculture, industry and services
sector useful or not? Using cross sector production data matrix, we simulated structure adjustment
policy. Based on data of productivity of industries, we set that productivity of agriculture as an S
curve. It means, the productivity growth of agriculture will stop depend on GDP and development
stage. It felt strange that the simulation results of structure adjustment between agriculture, industry
and services did not have much impact but structure adjustment within the industrial sub sector had
much impact when adjustment could be successful to increase the productivity of the sector.
Combination of industry sub sector impacted and performance of industry sector leading to the growth
of GDP, as fine tuning made for high performance.
If industry development relies too much on domestic agriculture products, replacement of export raw
material type industry development, economic development fall into limit of growth. In cases where
we introduced turbulence in purchasing of raw material, we found it easy to see that turbulence
impacted growth of other sub industries.
We also checked the strengthening of linkage between industry sub sectors with change of
parameters and showed stabilization of procurement and consumption. We find this policy is quite
useful for industry development. Such mechanisms for maintaining linkage between sub sectors and
large scale enterprises have been developed in Japan by private initiatives as virtual subsidiary
(Keirestu) and succeeded. Malaysia and Indonesia introduced development of such mechanism in their
industry development master plan and in Malaysian case, they succeed. They encouraged
development of a friendly linkage between multi-national companies and domestic companies, that
caused stabilization of domestic raw material consumption. However, in the Indonesian case, political
change caused a crash and the linkages failed. Many economists also criticized the linkage
strengthening policy saying that it creates barriers to free competition market mechanism.
8-2) Hypothesis of macro model 2: Impact of industry integration
Many developing countries establish the industry estate and integrate SME into single industry sub
sector. In China and also Japan several decades ago, there were so many integrated sub sectors in one
estate and makes cities. In the same manner, we assumed such integration strengthens the export
power and conducted the simulation. As mentioned before, we have no choice but to rely on the
statistic data of exports in SME sector, we assumed that industry integration can increase the export
ratio. This integration may also be related to the light industry ratio and the heavy industry ratio but
not create linkage in this model. The simulation results were the same as hypothesis 1. Integration is
useful and has impact on industry development. However, this simulation result was not consistent
with simulation results in micro model. In the simulation of micro model, integration gives negative
impact in relation to reduction of the market share. But our micro SME model does not consider
foreign markets at all.
As our observation, many developing countries are eager to develop the integration such as industrial
estate or industrial zone. Large scale integrated industry zones for textiles, machines and IT (called
high tech park) were developed in China. In other countries such as Indonesia, the Philippines,
Bangladesh and Thailand, they developed export oriented industry estates and/or trading and were
successful in contributing to increased exports.
8-3) Hypothesis of macro model 3: Could IT/software bring sound industry development?
We added IT/software parameters into our macro model. As IT/software industry does not have
strong linkage with other industry sub sectors, the success of this sector development increased
exports in a straight line and finally the industry SME production. IT/software sector production is
controlled by IT utility, which is telecommunication infrastructure and IT new venture ratio. This part
is so simple and easy to control but again, our model did not consider the linkage with the world
market. As we could not find suitable statistical data for export of IT/software industry and the
relation with the world market, we could not make a conclusion. Development of other sub industries
were affected by other industry sub sector development such as the development of electronic and
machine industries which have limited material support from metal industry. Our model is simple
toward the relationship between industry sub sector but the relation of supplier and consumer limiting
the straight and sound growth of sub industry sector production. This relationship may have to be
studied further in the supply chain area.
Maybe the structure of our model is too conservative for SME development policy which shifted to
high tech or IT/software focus development recently. However, our old fashioned traditional style
simulation concluded fine tuning style balanced industry sub sector development is most effective for
sound SME sector development. Also, need to change from domestic consumption oriented to export
oriented to increase the market size for production of SME sector.
8-4) Hypothesis of macro model 4: What is necessary for development?
Several studies and research are conducted on Asian Miracle which focus on the success of high and
long socio-economic development in East Asia. Is SD could possibly trace on this success
mechanism? In other words, what is necessary for under develop country could reach to developed? Is
it the initial condition shown in table 2 and resources rich country could take easy take off? Which
gives much impact to the sound development, finance or infrastructure? For check this matters, we
developed the agro-process focused model that makes much detailed of the macro model of chart 3.
The mechanism shows in chart 4. Main flow goes crops, vegetable and other agriculture raw material
to self-consumption and keeps balance in under developed situation. Gradually, people use part of
those raw materials for food processing and handy craft products processed in house such as bamboo
basket for agriculture use. Its goes to domestic market mainly and gradually shift to export. For push
the products to domestic and international market, farmer get petty cash and this cycle (thick blue
arrow) makes reinforcement cycle. In such phenomenon could possibly cause for change with
distribution infrastructure, finance and technical assistance and merchandise infrastructure (bold type
parameters). Initial condition one, import replacement and two, raw material replacement could check
using this model. Our simulation results shows not difference with initial condition for long term.
Limit of handy craft type production capability, industry need to shift from handy craft production to
small factory type manufacturing (red arrow). If domestic market is stable or export market is stable,
industry could keep developing. But disturbance of intemational market links with export and industry
heavily relay on the export, it is very hard for keeps maintain the stable. Success of the development
depends on the success for switch to small factory type manufacturing and could keep adjusting to the
fluctuation of the world market.
In the reality, domestic market also is infected with intemational market and domestic production
affected by import goods even agro-process products. It’s depends on the cost and distribution
infrastructure. Also, even petty cash could hardly provided to the poor farmer even in merchandise
infrastructure that is developed some levels for many developing countries.
self consimption
PF domestc use
7 distribution
small facto] infrastructur
eturing + — Export
Fluctuation of
world market
petty cash +
agriculture meting $e
merchandise
infratructure
Chart 4: Outline of macro model for SME industry sub sector for focus on agri-process industry
9. Conclusion
It is not with one packaged completed model simulation, however, with combined use of several
models for SME industry, we concluded that:
1) It is almost impossible for self develop of industries by their own efforts. Developing country could
being stable if keep maintain within self consumption cycle or domestic market oriented.
However, when involved in the world market:
2) Success of development mean almost fine tuning of many effective factors and adjust for
fluctuation coming from macro market.
And several mechanism may useful for stable toward macro market fluctuation such as:
3) Financial assistance and financial assistance structure (smooth banking and/or guarantee scheme) is
most important impact for SME industry development.
3) Linkages with multi-national or large scale company also have impact to make stable of the market.
But:
5) These simulation results does not include human side emotion such as weak for corruption that
many times makes barrier for development.
10. Further study.
We selected the way to simplify the model to avoid the chaotic behavior of SME. However, as
mentioned before, SME itself have complex nature and can easily fall into chaotic management
situations through failure of decision making on facility investment. It may be worthwhile to study
how the total SME sector will behave if we develop the SME linkage model. Kobayashi already
conducted a model like the Japanese local goverment model and built a linkage model of the 47
prefectures. In this model, each prefecture behaves as micro model and total linkage could be macro
model. In such macro-micro linkage model, composed of industry sub-sector linkage model would be
one candidate. Our model is actually rather simplified and does not closely study the impact of tools to
sub industry linkage.
Another model for linkage of more than 100 SME models will be a very attractive study. Nobody in
SD has yet studied what will happen to the behavior of a macro model that is composed of micro
model of chaotic nature. Complexity should be studied more.
11. Bibliography
1. Study on Knowledge Based Support for SME Sector Development, JICA, March 2000
2. Study on Competence of Soft Area Consulting Firms in Japan, Industry Research Institutes, May
2000
3. Dynamics of Policy Science Study - Excel System Dynamics, H. Kobayashi, 1997
4. Exposition of Exponential Delay, H. Kobayashi, Policy Sciences Research Report Series #8, May
2000
