Micro-Entrepreneurs: Challenges of moving up the Ladder

Efam Dovi reports on the importance of access to credit for micro-entrepreneurs looking to ascend into manufacturing:

About 80 per cent of women-owned businesses are stuck at the “micro” level. They are unable to expand because they lack properly coordinated support, cheap and long-term credit and sufficient access to new technologies. They face poor infrastructure, low capacity and sometimes obstructive government policies

notes that the banks appear more willing to give loans to importers of cheap products than to local manufacturers. The importers sell their produce quickly, at higher returns. But home-grown businesses require more time to turn a profit and to repay their loans, so the financial institutions shy away from them.