Scholarly record

ASSESSMENT OF THE AVAILABILITY OF BANK FINANCING FOR MICRO-ENTERPRISES IN POLAND

A. Lemanska-Majdzik

Abstract

Micro-enterprises employing up to 9 employees are the largest group of SMEs. These are the companies that are highly sensitive to the variability of the environment and the quality of the business environment. This specific group of companies often does not have appropriate financial resources necessary to be competitive in the market and has low human and intellectual resources. These distinctive characteristics make micro-enterprises be a frequent beneficiary of external sources of financing. The information on the financial offer, the procedure for acquiring funds, and the conditions entrepreneurs have to meet are the factors that determine the possibilities of benefiting from this type of financial help associated with the business activity. The aim of the paper is to review the selected subject literature and, on the basis of the own research, to present the assessment of the availability of external funding for the activity of micro-enterprises in Poland, in particular taking into account bank financing. The assessment of the availability was made based on the opinions of the owners of the companies of a different business profile. Ninety four business owners employing up to 9 employees conducting their activities in Southern Poland took part in the research. The study, carried out in 2016, was a target study using a questionnaire. The conducted statistical analysis using basic statistics and nonparametric statistics allowed to show the assessment of the availability of external sources of financing for micro-enterprises, including the possibility of fund raising offered by banks. The assessment of micro-entrepreneurs indicated that bank financing is the most common source of external funding. The information on bank offers and the procedures used by banks proved to be better than other forms offered by the financial market. In addition, the range of bank offers for financing micro-enterprises proved to be the best-designed offer for this type of businesses. Moreover, the research indicated that the correct forms of financial support coming from external sources of financing, addressed to micro-enterprises, in the opinion of their owners, influence the quality of the business environment.

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DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/sgemsocial2017/15/S05.016

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