SIGNIFICANCE

This research was undertaken to identify the main challenges hindering the success of SME`s in
Ghana and also to find out the reasons why these SME`s are unable to get access to credit
facilities for growth and sustainability.

The outcome of the study would assist policy makers to see the need to assist SME`s. This
would go a long way to create job opportunities for the unemployed youth .However , other
research on SME financing shows that there is a wide gap in knowledge of the determinant of
access to credit among SME`s in Ghana .Though other studies have been carried out regarding
how credit are supply to SME`s in Ghana , not much emphasis was placed on what determines
the demand for credit by these SME`s. However studies by (Kumah ,2011; Osei-Assbey ,2014)
may have some amount of deficiency because their analysis was based on some few firms
which do not reflect the actuality in the industry .

Therefore this research will try to take care of these deficiency by trying to model the
determinant of access to credit by using Heckman probit regression with large sample selection
method .This method does not only look out for firms that apply for credit but also those that
wish to go for credit but were discouraged in one way or the other. We hope that the outcome
of this study will bring about government policy changes and eliminate or reduce blockages
with regards to credit access by these firms. Also the outcome of the research will guide lending
institution on how to meet the financial needs of these firms .Furthermore the outcome of this
study will serve as a guide to these SME`s on what to do in order to access credit more easily
from financial institutions .

METHODOLOGY

This study will make use of both quantitative and qualitative method .Both method are to be
employed to allow the researcher to make use of both quantitative and qualitative data
collection techniques and data analysis procedures .Saunders et al, (2007) emphasis the use of
the multiple method saying ;not only is it perfectly possible to combine both quantitative and
qualitative in the same piece of research , but it will give a clearer views and outcome.

Even though the two methods have different procedures regarding research direction , any
single approach is unduly simplistic in this study. Also using the two method will lead to what
we expect to achieve after this study .We will be using descriptive technique for this study .This
is necessary because we want to portray an accurate profile of persons , event and situation in
order to obtain informations which can be analyse and pattern extracted and comparison
made.
Sampling Techniques

The population of the study is SME`s in Ghana. Because of the large nature of the population
being considered ,we decided to employ convenience random sampling technique for sampling
of respondent . Convenience sampling technique will be used to select the areas where the
respondent will be chosen from . By definition , convenience sampling is selecting the research
participant on the basis of being accessible and reasonabling being representative of the
population of interest (Baumgartner ,Strond and Hensling ,2002).

Fifty SME`s would be selected from each region and selection would be based on information
provided by the office of National Board for Small Scale Enterprises (NBSSE). The same number
of SME`s will be selected from each region so as to have a fair representation from each region
though we are aware that some regions have dense population than others base on NBSSE
report. In all 500 SME`s will be selected since Ghana has ten regions.

Quantitative Analysis

The research will make use of Heckman probit regression with sample selection to estimate the
factors that influence firms access to credit and the determinant of possibility of applying for
credit among SME`s in Ghana. IT is well known that firms can only access credit when their
application are approved . However, as noted by Krasniqi (2010), firms access to credit can be
estimate only if they apply for the credit . Therefore it will be difficult to evaluate access to
credit for firms that do not apply for credit for various reasons .Whether to apply for credit or
not is a sole decision of these firms .Some would not apply for credit for the fear of being
denied or because interest that they will pay on these credit or because they do not have the
right collateral to enable them access these credits. Because of these reasons , we decided not
limit our research only to firms that have apply for credit.

Qualitative Analysis

Since our focus of this research is not only to study the numerical data of these SME`s ,we have
adopted qualitative mechanism to sample the view of managers or owners of these firms .We
have decided to use interviewing and questionnaire method. Interviewing method to enable us
sample the views of these SME`s owners or managers who cannot read nor write .Because if we
limit our scope to only those who can read and write, we may be bias in our analysis. Because it
could be that most of the SME`S who do not apply for credit are those managed by these
illiterates where no records are kept.

Also questionnaires will be use to sample the theoretical views of those who can read and
write.