INFRASTRUCTURIAL DEVELOPMENT AS PREDICTOR TO SMALL & MEDIUM ENTERPRISES PERFORMANCE IN NIGERIA

Abstract

This study is aimed at examining the effect which infrastructures have on SMEs performance. The main objective of the study was to critically examine the effects which certain infrastructures have on the performance of small and medium scale enterprises and to achieve this, salient issues on main infrastructures such as education, power/electricity, technology and transportation were examined to analyse what effects they have on SMEs using some performance measures such as; business survival, profitability, sales turnover and product/service delivery. The research design utilized for this study was the quantitative research design while the population includes all the 593 registered SMEs in Ogun-State (According to SMEDAN). A total of 239 questionnaires were administered to the target sample to find out the effects of the mentioned infrastructures on the performance of SMEs. Both the stratified and the simple random sampling techniques were utilized during the course of the study. To achieve the objectives of the study, four hypotheses were formulated and tested from the structure of the research questions. Furthermore, ANOVA was used in testing these hypotheses with the help of SPSS. The findings show that there is a significant positive correlation between infrastructures and SME performance, this implies that infrastructures play a huge role in ensuring the successful business operation of SMEs. It is therefore recommended that government should adequately provide these basic infrastructures for SMEs as most infrastructures cannot be afforded by the SMEs themselves. Also, SMEs should also do more to attract governmental attention and interest.