Journal of Business Management and Economics

Vietnam has been joined into Word Trade Organization since 2007 and therefore the country needs to take into account a lot of international trading framework but it also brings higher opportunities to explore other markets. Since Vietnamese Small and Medium enterprises (SMEs) are leading industry in term of exports, SMEs have to focus on strengthening their knowledge in term of trading performances. However, there are not so many studies that have been conducted to investigate how export activity responding to its antecedents in Vietnam. This study showed that there were 200 managers of SMEs related to Southern Area of Vietnam who interviewed and answered about 21 questions but 188 managers of SMEs processed. Data collected from 8/2016 to 11/2017 for the managers of SMEs of Southern Area of Vietnam. The paper had been analyzed KMO test, Cronbach's Alpha and the result of KMO analysis which used for multiple regression analysis. Managers of SMEs’ responses measured through an adapted questionnaire on a 5-point Likert scale (Conventions: 1: Completely disagree, 2: Disagree, 3: Normal; 4: Agree; 5: completely agree). Hard copy and online questionnaire distributed among 10.000 the SMEs of Southern Area of Vietnam. In addition, the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) results showed that there were five factors affecting the SMEs’ exporting activities of Southern Area of Vietnam with significance level 5 percent. The research results processed from SPSS 20.0 software.

Most SMEs lack collateral security which is required by commercial banks to access credit and as a result, they end up borrowing from MFIs. The study aimed to identify to what extent firm and borrower characteristics influence business performance of Micro and Small Enterprises (MSEs), with evidence from MFIs in Uganda. Ex-facto design was used, where 174 MSEs were included in the sample which was drawn randomly from the lists of borrowers collected from MFIs in the districts of Soroti and Kumi in Eastern Uganda. Using a self-administrated questionnaire the data was collected from owners of MSEs with 100% response rate. Data was analyzed using the (SPSS), and a number of statistical techniques through descriptive statistics, arithmetic means, standard deviations and percentages. Correlation analysis was used to test the hypothesis, while regression analysis was use to assess the influence of the predictors on the outcome. The study found that there was a significant positive relation between borrower’s characteristics and performance, and similarly, there existed a significant positive relationship between business characteristics and performance. The study concluded that for Micro Finance Institutions (MFIs) to realize reasonable profits, great efforts need to be channeled towards efficient and effective consideration of loan terms, borrower’s characteristics and business characteristics.