Colombia’s Small and Medium Exporters and their Support System

Abstract

The first main goal of this chapter is to evaluate the role and potential of dynamic small and medium enterprise (SME) in Colombia’s present and future development. The SME sector has received little serious attention from policy makers, in spite of its substantial weight in the manufacturing sector; its demonstrated capacity to grow rapidly under favorable circumstances and to provide the seed-bed from which emerge many of the important companies of the future (Cortes et al, 1983; Gomez and Villaveces, 1979); and its role as a channel whereby the traditionally very narrow group at the center of the socio-economic system could be and to some extent has been widened. Both institutional structure and policies have traditionally favored the large economic actors. Over the last couple of decades considerable attention has also been directed toward the microenterprise sector, and a number of innovative programs have been designed to assist it. The SME sector has remained, at least until very recently, the forgotten segment of the size structure. The political “opening” via the Constitutional Conference of 1991 and related changes in the political process reflect strong pressures from those outside the traditional elite to play a greater role; many SME entrepreneurs belong to this previously somewhat marginalized class¹. It is important that the economic options of this group be improved, commensurate with the political opening now occurring, and that the considerable entrepreneurial dynamism located in the sector be fully utilized. The recent policy shift towards a more open economy raises separate questions of how SME will fare under the more intense global competition to come, and what policy support is appropriate under these changing conditions.