Access to finance by Saudi SMEs
Ahmed Awad Rawdhan
Abstract
The aim of this paper was to review the challenges and problems faced by SMEs for sourcing their fund requirements and the methods of addressing them. A section was devoted to reviewing these points in the context of the current covid pandemic. Four objectives were formed to facilitate the literature search in Google Scholar. Although there are several papers available on the topics of interest, only a limited number was selected considering the size limitations of this review. The findings helped to identify many challenges in accessing finance from banks and even from Islamic financing. A few attractive sources before, during and after the covid period are the Islamic instruments of Zakkat, Musharakah and Mudaraba and Qardh-Al-Hasan, especially Qardh-Al-Hasan with AI-based FinTech model. These instruments place minimum strain on the SMEs to procure the required finance.