2014年中小企业融资外文翻译文献

文献信息：

文献标题：Financing in SMEs: Case of the Baltic States（中小企业融资：以波罗的海国家为例）

国外作者：Ramona Rupeika-Apoga

文献出处：《Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences》,2014, 150:116-125字数统计：英文2177单词，11410字符；中文3954汉字

外文文献：

Financing in SMEs: Case of the Baltic States Abstract Access to finance represents one of the most significant challenges for SMEs’ entrepreneurs. To ensure SMEs creation, existence and growth it is vitally important to understand the financing needs of SMEs and entrepreneurs, the main obstacles to finance availability and accessibility. The study indicates the difficulties in SMEs financing for the three Baltic States and provides the governments and other stakeholders with a tool to understand SMEs’ financing needs. The study results highlight importance of alternative resources of external financing for small developing countries such as the Baltic ones and the need to support the design and evaluation of policy measures and to monitor the implications of financial reforms on SMEs’ access to finance.

Keywords: SMEs financing, access to finance, alternative finance recourses, the Baltic States

1.Introduction

2008-2009 financial crises has effected availability of external financing for SMEs more dramatically than large enterprises, in the form of higher interest rates, shortened maturities and increased request for collateral. As a result nowadays access to finance represents one of the most significant challenges for SMEs’ entrepreneurs. In the Baltic States SMEs form the largest part of companies, providing the majority

of jobs. Nevertheless, SMEs commonly follow “niche strategies,” using high product quality, flexibility, and responsiveness to customer needs as a means of competing with large-scale mass producers (see, for example, Hallberg, 2000 and Snodgrass, 1996), many researchers have highlighted the shortage of financial resources and access to finance as one of the main barriers to SMEs innovation capacity. Baltic companies find difficult to obtain commercial bank financing, especially long-term loans, for a number of reasons, including lack of collateral, difficulties in proving creditworthiness, small cash flows, inadequate credit history, high risk premiums, underdeveloped bank-borrower relationships and high transaction costs.

Over the past two decades, the Baltic exchanges have strived to address their clients’needs by employing the latest developments and innovations, and in taking the lead in reforming the securities market. This process has been accelerated by integrating with one of the world’s largest exchange operator and technology supplier across six continents, NASDAQ OMX Group. Altogether, above eighty companies are listed on two Baltic equities lists, which had a market cap of around EUR 5.8 billion in July 2013. The biggest equity market is in Lithuania, then in Estonia and the smallest in Latvia. For SMEs the equity market is more available than the bond market. Unfortunately, the choice of making company shares available for public purchase is in most cases only possible for already well known and with good reputation as well with high growth potential ones. Only in such cases companies can attract investors and to raise public interest. There are strict entry requirements imposed on companies wishing to go ahead with this process. Nevertheless such small listed company quantity and market cap shows that capital market availability is even more problematic than banking loans.

2.Literature Review And Hypotheses

2.1.Access to finance as a challenge for SMEs’existence

Over 2007-2010 in most countries, SMEs faced more severe credit conditions that did large enterprises, in the form of higher interest rates, shortened maturities and increased request for collateral (OECD, 2012). After a slight improvement in 2010,

credit conditions tightened in most countries in 2011, possibly triggered by an increased awareness of risk on the part of lending institutions. In the Euro area, trends in nominal interest rates reflected tensions on sovereign debt, which increased at the end of 2011, as the interest rate on national debt is usually a lower threshold for the cost of financing in the remaining sectors. A broad range of studies based on various surveys have highlighted that access to finance is one of the main challenges in the way of companies’growth and development, especially in the case of small and medium enterprises (Peachey, 2004; Beck, 2006; Beck, 2008; ECB, 2012). Numerous studies that use firm-level survey data demonstrate that access to finance and the cost of credit pose barriers to SME financing (Scholtens, 1999; Schiffer, 2001; Galindo, 2003; IADB, 2004; Beck, 2006(a); Beck, 2006 (b)). Similar results were found also in other studies: access to credit is one of the biggest constraints for SMEs in Colombia (Stephanou, 2008); lack of access to finance together with management, labour skills and regulation are the main constraints to growth of SMEs in the UK (Binks, 1997); inability to raise external finance in Slovenia is one of the main obstacles for the SME sector underdevelopment (Hutchinson, 2006); lack to access of external finance is one of the main problems in most of Central and Eastern Europe (Anderson, 1997; Budina, 2000; Gros, 2000; Konings, 2003).

Conducted literature and surveys review shows that importance of access to finance significantly differs by country development level, business environment and economic prospects.

H1: Access to finance is one of the main challenges for SMEs to doing business in the Baltic States

2.2.Alternative finance resources

When a company wants to raise money, one of its first decisions is whether to do so by bank lending or by issuing bonds and shares. In the 20th century, most company finance, apart from share issues was raised by bank loans. But since about 1980 there has been an ongoing trend for disintermediation, where large and credit worthy companies have found they effectively have to pay out less in interest if they borrow from the capital markets rather than banks. The tendency for companies to borrow

from capital markets instead of banks has been especially strong in the US, whereas in Europe the most popular external resources of finances are bank loans, bank overdrafts, trade credits, when other resources as securities, venture capital and other funds are seldom used.

H2: The importance of alternative financing for the Baltic States is growing

3.Methodology

3.1.Research Goal

In this study the author aims to highlight importance of alternative funds as a source of external financing for the Baltic States SMEs. The research indicates the difficulties in SMEs financing and provides the governments and other stakeholders with a tool to understand SMEs’ financing needs that helps to improve the access to financing for companies and to support the design and evaluation of policy measures an d to monitor the implications of financial reforms on SMEs’ access to finance.

During development of the paper the generally accepted qualitative and quantitative methods of economic research were used including comparative analysis and synthesis, graphical illustration methods.

3.2.Sample and Data Collection

The analysis conducted in this paper is based on data and statistics provided mainly by the Baltic States Central banks, Venture Capital funds and grants programmes, by certain empirical studies and by the World economic forum data base.

3.3.Analyses and Results

Survey on the access to finance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the euro area conducted by ECB has highlighted that in 2013 “Access to finance” was second ranked most pressing problem faced by SMEs in the Euro Area (16%), with a wide divergence across countries, with similar results in previous years (see Fig 1).

On the high side, 32% of the SMEs in Greece, 23% in Spain and 20% in Ireland, Italy and the Netherlands mentioned access to finance as the most pressing problem, compared with around 8% of the SMEs in Germany and Austria on the low side (see Fig. 2).

Finding customers is the main concern for euro area SMEs (24% of euro area SMEs), whereas availability of skilled staff or experienced managers (14%) and cost of production or labour were mentioned as other very important obstacles for doing business.

Across euro area countries, when asked how pressing “access to finance” is as a problem in their current situation, a very large percentage of firms in Greece (61%), Spain and Italy (both 50%) and, to a lesser extent, Portugal (40%) reported that this is a very pressing problem (scale 7-10), while the corresponding percentage in Germany

and Belgium is around 30% and in Finland it drops to 24%. At the same time, 55% of firms in Finland, 45% in Belgium, and 43% in Germany and Austria considered access to finance a not pressing problem (scale 1-3) (ECB, 2013).

In accordance with SME Finance forum data, access to finance is the major problem for ? of all SMEs in Latvia and Lithuania (see table1) and mostly companies are using loans (about 20% of all companies) or overdrafts (about 10% ). Almost half of the companies have stated that they don’t need credit and companies that received loans had gotten them from private commercial banks (about 80%).

Table 1 Access to finance as major/ severe barrier in the Baltic States SMEs (SME Finance forum data)

The results of the conducted analysis support H1- Access to finance is one of the main challenges for SMEs to doing business in the Baltic States as well in Europe and that importance of access to finance significantly differs on country development level, business environment and economic prospects.

In table 2 the author reflected her personal knowledge of financial resources availability in the Baltic markets. The summary is general, and of course shifts in both directions are possible.

Table 2 Access to finance for new and small/ unknown companies

Availability of financial funds strongly depends on company development level, the bigger and familiar you are the broader choices you have. What is important, that for new companies alternative funds are more available: business angels, venture capital funds, different government support programs and seed funding. This field for Baltic States is rather new, but it’s new also for other countries as a result all countries (more or less) are in the same conditions and as showed previous analysis the Baltic States so far showed rather good results and hopefully this market segment

will be the way for Baltic states to become innovative driven economies.

Analysing availability of financial services in the Baltic States in general, the author concluded that in Estonia companies and individuals have better access than in Latvia and Lithuania, ranking Estonia in 43 place (2012), within 45 best countries, at the same level as Slovak Republic and Czech Republic, and not far from Japan’s and Israel’s levels. Whereas Latvia’s and Lithuania’s positions are 65 and 74 respectively, placing Latvia at the same level as Jamaica and Colombia, and for Lithuania - Uganda and Zambia. Whereas access to finance is significantly better in Estonia, the affordability of financial services is rather similar in the all Baltic countries, placing Latvia and Estonia in 58 and 59 places out of 144 countries, and Lithuania in 73rd place. By evaluating the positions of the Baltic States in the world countries ranks, Latvia shows an improved affordability of financial services when compared with access to services, whereas in Estonia the situation is opposite, as for Lithuania in both determinants situation is the same.

Conducted analysis supports H2 by emphasising the importance of alternative financing for the Baltic States.

4.Conclusion

Conducted empirical analysis proves that SMEs’ access to finance in the Baltic States is one of the major obstacles to doing business in the Baltic States as well as in the rest of Europe and availability of alternative financing for the Baltic States is improving. As a result H1 (access to finance is one of the main challenges for SMEs to doing business in the Baltic States) and H2 (the importance of alternative financing for the Baltic States is growing) are fully supported.

Availability of financial funds strongly depends on company development level, the bigger and familiar you are the broader choices you have. What is important, that for new companies alternative resources: business angels, venture capital funds, different government support programs and seed funding are more available than bank loans. This field for the Baltic States is rather new, but it’s new also for other countries as a result all countries (more or less) are in the same conditions and

hopefully this market segment will be the way for the Baltic states to become innovative driven economies.

The Baltic States Governments responded to the global financial crisis and its effects on SME financing with a variety of instruments. The most popular measure was loan guarantee programmes, which expanded substantially over 2007-2011. Furthermore, new elements were added to these programmes, or new instruments were created outside of the traditional guarantee programmes. Other public instruments to enhance SME finance included direct loans, micro loans, export guarantees, and support for risk capital (equity) either in the form of co-financing or tax credits for investors.

中文译文：

中小企业融资：以波罗的海国家为例

摘要获得融资是中小企业企业家面临的最大挑战之一。为了确保中小企业的创建、生存和增长，了解中小企业和企业家的融资需求，以及资金可用性和可取性的主要障碍，显得至关重要。这项研究表明, 三个波罗的海国家的中小企业存在融资困难，并向政府和其他利益相关者提供了解中小企业融资需求的工具。研究结果强调了诸如波罗的海等小发展中国家的外部融资替代资源的重要性，以及需要支持政策措施的设计和评估，并监测金融改革对中小企业融资渠道的影响。

关键词：中小企业融资，融资渠道，替代融资资源，波罗的海国家

1.简介

与大企业相比，2008-2009年的金融危机以较高利率、缩短到期日及增加抵押品的形式，对中小企业外部融资的有效性的影响更为显著。因此，现在获得融资是中小企业企业家面临的最大挑战之一。在波罗的海国家，中小企业是公司的最大组成部分, 提供了大部分的就业机会。然而，中小型企业通常遵循“利基

战略”，采用高品质、灵活性和响应客户需求作为与大规模生产者竞争的手段（参见，例如，哈尔伯格，2000和斯诺德格拉斯，1996），许多研究人员着重指出,金融资源短缺和获取融资是中小企业创新能力的主要障碍之一。波罗的海公司很难获得商业银行融资，特别是长期贷款，原因有很多，其中包括缺乏抵押品，难以证明信誉，现金流量小，信贷历史不足，风险溢价高，银行借款人关系不发达以及交易成本高。

在过去20年中, 波罗的海交易所一直致力于利用不断更新的发展和改革来解决客户的需求，并率先改革证券市场。波罗的海交易所通过与全球最大的交易所运营商和跨越六大洲的技术供应商之一的纳斯达克OMX集团进行整合，加快了这一进程。总共有八十家公司在两个波罗的海股票清单上上市,其中在2013年7月的市值约为58亿欧元。最大的股票市场在立陶宛, 然后在爱沙尼亚，最小的在拉脱维亚。对于中小企业而言，股票市场比债券市场更为有效。不幸的是，在大多数情况下，只有众所周知的、拥有良好的信誉且增长潜力高的中小企业才有可能选择公开发行股票以供公众购买。只有在这种情况下，公司才能吸引投资者并提高公众利益。对于希望继续进行这一过程的公司，有严格的准入要求。然而，如此小的上市公司数量和市场上限表明, 资本市场的可用性甚至比银行贷款更成问题。

2.文献综述和假设

2.1.融资对中小企业生存的挑战

在大多数国家，2007-2010年，与大型企业相比，中小企业面临更为严峻的信贷条件，被要求较高利率、缩短到期日及增加抵押品（经济合作与发展组织，2012）。2010年略有改善之后，2011年大部分国家的信贷状况收紧，这可能是由于借贷机构对风险意识的提高而引发的。在欧元区，名义利率的趋势反映出主权债务的紧张局面，由于国债利率通常是其余部门融资成本的一个较低门槛，因此在2011年底有所增加。以各种调查为基础的广泛研究表明, 获得融资是公司成长和发展的主要挑战之一, 特别是在中小企业（皮奇，2004；贝克，2006；贝克，2008；欧洲央行，2012）。使用企业级调查数据的大量研究表明，获得融资和信贷成本构成了中小企业融资的障碍（肖突尼斯，1999；希弗, 2001；加林多,

2003；泛美开发银行，2004；贝克，2006（a）；贝克，2006（b））。在其他研究中也发现了类似的结果：获得信贷是哥伦比亚中小企业最大的制约因素之一（斯蒂芬诺，2008）；缺乏与管理、劳动技能和法规相适应的融资渠道是英国中小企业增长的主要制约因素（宾克斯，1997）；无法在斯洛文尼亚筹集外部资金是中小企业发展不足的主要障碍之一（哈钦森，2006）；缺乏外部资金是中欧和东欧大多数国家的主要问题之一（安德森，1997；布迪娜，2000；格罗斯，2000；可尼斯，2003）。

进行的文献调查报告显示，获得融资的重要性因国家发展水平、经营环境和经济前景而不同。

假设1：获得融资是中小企业在波罗的海国家开展业务的主要挑战之一

2.2.替代财务资源

当一家公司想要筹集资金时，它的第一个决定是,是否通过银行贷款或发行债券和股票。二十世纪以来，大多数公司的融资, 除了股票发行都是由银行贷款筹集的。但是自1980年以来，一直存在着金融脱媒的持续趋势，大型信贷公司已经发现，如果他们从资本市场而不是银行借款，他们实际上只需要付出较少的利息。在美国，公司从资本市场而不是银行借款的趋势尤其强劲，而在欧洲，最受欢迎的外部资金来源是银行贷款、银行透支、贸易信贷，其他资源如证券、风险投资和其他基金则很少使用。

假设2：波罗的海国家的替代融资的重要性正在增加

3.方法

3.1.研究目标

在这项研究中，作者旨在强调替代资金作为波罗的海中小企业外部融资来源的重要性。研究表明，中小企业存在融资困难，并向政府和其他利益相关者提供了解中小企业融资需求的工具，有助于改善公司的融资渠道，支持政策措施的设计和评估，并监测金融改革对中小企业融资渠道的影响。

在本文的开发过程中，采用了普遍接受的定性和定量的经济研究方法，包括比较分析和综合，图形说明方法。

3.2.样本和数据收集

本文的分析是基于波罗的海各国中央银行、风险投资基金和资助计划等数据和统计，以及一些实证研究和世界经济论坛数据库。

3.3.分析和结果

欧洲央行进行的关于欧元区中小企业融资情况调查显示，2013年，“获得融资”是欧元区中小企业面临的第二大紧迫问题（16％），各国之间的差异很大, 往年也有类似的结果 (见图1)。

图.1 国家对欧元区中小企业面临的最紧迫问题的贡献, 国家对被调查者百分比的贡献 (欧洲央行, 2013) 在高的地方，希腊32%的中小企业，西班牙23% 的中小企业，爱尔兰中小企业、意大利、荷兰20% 的中小企业，都提到获得融资是最紧迫的问题, 相比之下,偏低的地方，只有德国和奥地利8%的中小企业有提到 (见图 2)。

图.2 中小企业获得融资是欧元区最紧迫的问题,被调查者的百分比 (欧洲央行, 统计数据仓库)

寻求客户是欧元区中小企业（欧元区中小企业24％的中小企业）的主要关注点，而技术人员或经验丰富的管理人员（14％），被提及的生产成本或劳动力被认为是开展业务的其他重要障碍。

在欧元区各国，在当前形势下，当问及“获得融资”如何紧迫时是一个问题，希腊（61％）、西班牙和意大利（均为50％）的企业中很大一部分，葡萄牙（40％）企业中的较少部分，报告说这是一个非常紧迫的问题（7-10级），而相应的比例在德国和比利时约为30％，芬兰则下降到24％。与此同时，芬兰55％、比利时45％、德国和奥地利43％的企业，认为获得融资不是紧迫的问题（1-3级）（欧洲央行，2013年）。

根据中小企业金融论坛数据，获得融资是拉脱维亚和立陶宛25%的中小企业的主要问题（见表1），大多数企业正在使用贷款（约20%的企业）或透支（约10％）。近一半的企业表示，他们不需要信贷，他们已经从私人商业银行获得贷款（约80％）。

表1 获得融资是波罗的海国家中小企业的主要/严重障碍（中小企业金融论坛数据）

实施分析的结果支持假设1——获得融资是中小企业在波罗的海国家以及欧洲开展业务的主要挑战之一，获得融资的重要性因国家发展水平、经营环境和经济前景而不同。

在表2中，作者反映了她对波罗的海市场的资金资源可用性的了解。总结是一般性的，当然也可以在两个方向上转移。

表2 新兴和小型/未知公司获得融资

金融资金的可用性在很大程度上取决于公司的发展水平，你的公司越大越被人所熟知，你选择的范围就越广泛。重要的是，对于新公司来说, 替代资源如商业天使、风险投资基金、不同的政府支持计划和种子资金比银行贷款更容易获得。这个领域在波罗的海国家的是相当新的，但对其他国家来说也是新的。因此，所有国家（或多或少）都处于相同的条件，并希望这一细分市场将是波罗的海国家成为创新型经济体的途径。

分析波罗的海国家金融服务的普遍可用性，作者总结认为，在爱沙尼亚, 公

司和个人比拉脱维亚和立陶宛有更好的机会，在最好的45个国家中，爱沙尼亚的排名在43位（2012），与斯洛伐克和捷克处在同一水平，接近日本和以色列的水平。拉脱维亚和立陶宛的排名分别为65和74，拉脱维亚与牙买加、哥伦比亚相同，倾向于立陶宛-乌干达和赞比亚。尽管爱沙尼亚的获取融资渠道明显好转，但所有波罗的海国家的金融服务的负担能力相当相似，在144个国家中，拉脱维亚和爱沙尼亚分别排在第58位和第59位，立陶宛排在第73位。通过评估波罗的海国家在世界各国的地位，与服务相比，拉脱维亚金融服务的负担能力得到改善，而在爱沙尼亚情况则相反，至于立陶宛在这两个决定因素的情况是一样的。

通过强调波罗的海国家替代融资的重要性，实施的分析支持了假设2。

4.结论

实施的实证分析证明，中小企业在波罗的海国家获得融资是在波罗的海国家和欧洲其他国家开展业务的主要障碍之一，波罗的海国家的替代融资可用性正在得到改善。因此，假设1（获得融资是中小企业在波罗的海国家开展业务的主要挑战之一）和假设2（波罗的海国家的替代融资的重要性正在增加）得到了充分支持。

波罗的海各国政府通过各种手段对全球金融危机及其对中小企业融资的影响作出了回应。最受欢迎的措施是贷款担保计划，其规模大大超过2007-2011年。此外，这些方案还增加了新的内容, 或在传统的担保方案之外设立了新的文书。加强中小企业融资的其他公益工具包括直接贷款、小额贷款、出口担保，以及投资者共同融资或税收抵免形式的风险资本（权益）支持。