SME development, economic growth, and government intervention in a developing country: The Indonesian story

There is an ongoing debate in the literature on the development of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in less developed countries (LDCs) on two issues: the survival of SMEs in the course of economic development and the importance of government promotion programs for SME development. This research paper aims to examine those issues empirically with Indonesian data. For this purpose, it develops and tests a set of hypotheses. It shows that both real gross domestic product per capita and government development expenditure (especially that used to finance SME development promotion programs) have positive impacts on SME growth. With this finding, the research argues that SMEs in LDCs can survive, and even grow in the long-run, for three main reasons: (a) they create a niche market for themselves, (b) they act as a “last resort” for the poor, and (c) they will grow along with large enterprises (LEs) because of their increasingly important production linkages with LEs in the form of subcontracting.