Small and Medium Firm Lending in Mexico:  Lessons and Current Issues

Rodrigo  Canales; Ramana  Nanda

Chapter | The Mexico Competitiveness Report 2009 | 2009

Small and Medium Firm Lending in Mexico: Lessons and Current Issues

by Rodrigo Canales and Ramana Nanda

Abstract

Mexico is often cited as one of the world's most entrepreneurial countries in terms of the percentage of its population that has started or is in the process of starting a business venture. Yet Mexico does not seem to be very friendly to entrepreneurs, as confirmed by the fact that a large portion of new businesses is created in the informal sector. The authors identify the main obstacle to this area as the country's insufficient access to credit for small entrepreneurs. The chapter is devoted to assessing recent programs adopted in Mexico to foster SME competitiveness (including programs to increase capital availability) and draws some important conclusions for policymakers in their efforts to improve the micro-components of national competitiveness.

Keywords: Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Policy; Competition; Mexico;

Format: Print

Read Now

Citation:

Canales, Rodrigo, and Ramana Nanda. "Small and Medium Firm Lending in Mexico: Lessons and Current Issues." In The Mexico Competitiveness Report 2009, edited by Ricardo Hausmann, Emilio Austin, and Irene Mia. World Economic Forum, 2009.

Young, and particularly high-growth ventures often need to raise significant external finance, since their internal cash flow is usually insufficient to support the investments needed to grow. Although raising equity from venture capital or angel investors is the most well-known source of external finance for high-growth ventures, many entrepreneurs, particularly small business owners, rely on debt and other non-equity sources of capital to finance their ventures, either because equity capital is not available to them or because they want to avoid the ownership dilution and governance constraints associated with equity investments.

This note focuses on these non-equity sources of financing for entrepreneurs, paying particular attention to how the emergence of new technologies in risk assessment have expanded their availability for young firms.

Chai Point is India’s largest organized chai retailer. It has missed its target for retail store openings by approximately 25%, goals that are very important to its investors who are also their board members. However, it has developed an exciting new Internet based tea dispenser, that has the potential to dramatically increase Chai Point’s market opportunity and growth rate but can be seen as a change in their growth strategy. The founder needs to decide his strategy for his next board meeting. Should he focus on their past performance? Or should he spend time outlining boxC.in’s technology and potential, since this will be the first time that the institutional investors will be seeing this new capability?

Faculty & Research

Small and Medium Firm Lending in Mexico: Lessons and Current Issues

Abstract

Citation:

About the Author

More from the Author