This guide focuses on the financial instruments available to help bridge the financing gap for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), reviewing existing financing programs and their impacts and drawing out lessons learned.

The guide

• explores how governments and development partners have stepped in to address market failures through financial instruments, complementary market infrastructure, and regulatory initiatives
• provides an in-depth review of specific financial sector instruments (ranging from the traditional to the innovative) and will consider what works and why, with whom and under what conditions
• makes recommendations as to how SME financing programs could be structured including sequencing and preconditions for success.

Nathan Associates produced the guide for EPS-PEAKS, a consortium of organizations providing Economics and Private Sector Professional Evidence and Applied Knowledge Services to the U.K. Department for International Development (DfID).