‘Finding customers hardest task for SMEs’

Finding customers, not bank finance, is the biggest problem being faced by small and medium-sized business in Ireland, research from the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) has found.

An outline of the research, SME Credit Constraints and Macroeconomic Effects, is to be delivered at an ESRI/Department of Finance conference today on ‘SME Financing: Recent Trends and Policy Options.’

The research by Petra Gerlach-Kristen, Brian O’Connell and Conor O’Toole, which is expected to be published in full in the coming weeks, shows that finding customers for their products or services is the largest problem for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Ireland today.