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SMEs all over the world are now recognized as a driving force to the development of the economy. It has been found that they contribute to economies especially by contributing to GDP through creation of employment. In this study the general objective was to examine the extent to which emerging gas and cement industries in Lindi and Mtwara regions has promoted the indigenous entrepreneurship by looking at their SMEs performance. The study was conducted in Lindi and Mtwara both in rural and urban areas. It used both qualitative and quantitative research design. Simple random sampling was used to select 150 SME respondents. Data was analyzed descriptively and presented by figures, tables and by inferential statistics using logistic regression model. Data were collected through questionnaires and processed by SPSS and STATA.
Generally the findings indicate that, increased business opportunity, purchasing power, technological spillover and laws and regulations have a positive influence on the performance of indigenous entrepreneurs. ANOVA was used to find if there is a significant difference between rural and urban sales, employment and capital owned. The findings show that sales and employment have significant differences between rural and urban but capital has no significance difference. Logistic regression result shows that financial institutions have positive influence on the performance of SMEs with an increase in sales and capital employed. Growth in population found to have a positive influence on the performance of SMEs in terms of employment. Whereas infrastructure, internet, access to credit have the positive influence on performance of SMEs by increase in employment, sales and capital owned respectively and finally, e-sourcing and innovation have influence in performance of SME through the increase in sales and employment respectively.
The study recommended that, financial institution should promote SMEs through loans and training on financial management. Government should pay attention on helping youth to identify the opportunities in their areas and strengthen their policy, laws and regulation which found to be helpful in SMEs and finally addressing the challenges in access to credit, infrastructure, internet, e-sourcing and innovation. |
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