Service Delivery to SMMEs:A Pilot Study of SMMEs in the Western Cape, South Africa

Governments across the globe have realized that collaboration with the private and nonprofit sectors can make a positive contribution to addressing the social, economic and environmental challenges. South Africa is no exception, in that it needs to reduce, amongst others, the high unemployment and poverty rates and have identified Small, Medium and Micro Enterprise (SMME) development as one of the means to address it. With the assistance and cooperation of the necessary SMME stakeholders, the government developed the National Strategy for the Promotion of Small Business in which five objectives and 11 inhibiting factors were identified that should receive attention. The anecdotal evidence suggested that the objectives and inhibiting factors have not positively changed the economic landscape for the SMMEs; the reason why the researchers decided to empirically determine the extent to which the anecdotal evidence correlates with the empirical evidence. For this purpose, a structured pre-tested questionnaire was designed and used to collect the necessary data from SMME owners and managers and/ or CEOs from business support organizations. The managers and CEOs of the business support organizations were e-mailed, faxed and personally interviewed—yielding a response rate of 37.4%. Nearly, 106 usable questionnaires were completed and returned from the SMME owners. It is clear from the analysis that the objectives and the inhibiting factors were not properly addressed by the government through its business support organizations.