SME Financing: Small Businesses Struggle To Survive The Downturn

When it comes to securing financial support, entrepreneur Jack Ma, chairman and CEO of China's Alibaba Group, has this advice for small and medium-sized enterprises: don't rely on the government and the banks; rely instead on your family and friends. According to Jeanette Wong, head of institutional banking at Singapore's DBS Bank, SMEs get the financial support they need from governments and banks. However, she acknowledges that in the wake of the financial crisis, some banks had started recalling their loans due to their own financial difficulties, which then led to other banks reining in their lines of credit and causing a liquidity squeeze for SMEs.