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Sweden Essay

Decent Essays

SWEDEN Sweden is one of the world’s most developed economies and the Nordics largest with $517bn in nominal GDP . Despite the fact that Sweden is the third-largest country in the European Union by area it has only a total population of 10 million inhabitants most of them living in the Southern part of the country . With a GDP per capita of roughly $51,000, Sweden is considered a high-income country . The Swedish business sector comprises a significant number of SME companies. Together they account for 59% of value added and 66% of employment. Micro-businesses constitute 94.6% of all companies. Most SMEs operate in services, wholesale trade and retail, and construction. There are relatively few Swedish small and medium enterprises in the …show more content…

Consistent with it is that only 6.7 percent of firms in Sweden identified access to finance as their top obstacle. In comparison, 28 percent of firms selected an “inadequately educated workforce” as the top obstacle. In general, Sweden consistently ranks high on a number of indexes related to access to financial services. Overall, SMEs in Sweden are more likely to be credit constrained than large firms and manufacturing firms are more credit constrained compared to other sectors in the economy. A significantly higher percentage of innovative SMEs were credit constrained in 2013 than non-innovative or large firms. Moreover, sales growth is generally lower in credit-constrained firms than in firms that are not credit constrained. Historically, Swedish SMEs have benefitted tremendously from government and EU programs aimed at increasing access to finance, allowing firms to expand their business operations and grow. The data we collected seems to demonstrate that to a large extent Swedish authorities have been successful in creating an environment conducive to private firms’ getting access to credit. Laws and Regulations In Sweden there are different government bodies that oversee and try to help set or administer policies and regulations to promote SMEs. The Ministry of Enterprise and Innovation is overseeing the government commitment to financial inclusion and support

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