Determinants Predicting Credit Accessibility within Small and Medium-sized Enterprises in the South African Construction Industry

The contribution of Small and Medium-sized Enterprise (SME) sector in economic development, job creation and income generation has been recognized worldwide. These contributions are effectively articulated in South Africa construction industry discourse. However, the main problem limiting the SMEs sector to contribute fully in the mainstream economy is the shortage of finance. This study examines the impact of firm characteristics in access to credit by the South African SMEs in the construction industry. A deductive methodological approach was used to examine this problem. This paper utilises a combination of primary data emanating from structured survey questionnaires supplemented by secondary source of data from an extensive literature review, in order to present insightful commentary about credit accessibility within SMEs in South Africa. The structured survey questionnaire was administered to 179 construction small and medium organizations to elicit relevant data about their credit accessibility. Binary logistic regression was applied to determine the influence of demographic variables on credit accessibility. The equation specified access to credit as dependent variable while firm and personnel characteristics as independent variable. The statistical package for social science version 22 was used. The results indicate that firm characteristics influence access to finance. The study recommends that South Africa SME contractors should maintain attractive firm attributes to stimulate lenders to extend finance to their investments.