A Comparative Study on Clusters and non-Clusters Based SME Development in Bangladesh: Executive Summary

Abstract

The main objective of the study is to assess the comparative performance of the enterprises under the cluster and those of the enterprises outside clusters. The study also aims to identify the barriers and challenges along with the recommendations of clusterbased SME development. To fulfill the study objectives, the study adopts and employs a number of approaches and methodologies. They are an enterprise survey a number of key informant interviews (KIIs), a number of meetings or focus group discussions (FGDs) and three case studies. The study also uses secondary level information as well information obtained from consulting with the SMEF. The enterprise survey, KIIs, and meetings or FGDs include both includes cluster and non-cluster SMEs. The sample size for the enterprise survey is 500 (250 cluster SMEs and 250 non-cluster SMEs). The KIIs includes 75 clusters KIIs and 75 non-cluster SMEs. The meeting consists of15 cluster meetings and 15 non-cluster meetings. Several descriptive, statistical, and econometric methods have been used to process various sets of data and to examine the study objectives. The methods mainly include frequency distribution, a simple t-statistics and several ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions analyses. Based on various analyses, the findings of the study are summarized as follows.