Financing SMEs and entrepreneurs 2013 ; an OECD scoreboard

Access to finance represents one of the most significant challenges for entrepreneurs and for the creation, survival and growth of small businesses. As governments address this challenge, they are running up against a major and longstanding obstacle to policy making: insufficient evidence and data. Better data is needed to understand the financing needs of SMEs and entrepreneurs and to provide the basis for informed institutional and public policy decisions.
The OECD Scoreboard on financing SMEs and entrepreneurs represents a major step in addressing this obstacle by establishing a comprehensive international framework for monitoring SMEs' and entrepreneurs' access to finance over time. The Scoreboard presents data for a number of debt, equity and financing framework condition indicators. Taken together, they provide governments and other stakeholders with a tool to understand SMEs' financing needs, to support the design and evaluation of policy measures and to monitor the implications of financial reforms on SMEs' access to finance.