Banking sector development and financial performance of small and medium enterprises in Mogadishu, Somalia

This study attempts to establish the relationship between banking sector development and the financial performance of small and medium enterprises in Mogadishu, Somalia. Financial intermediation theory is adopted to explain this relationship. The study adopted a correlational research design with 55 SMEs operating in Mogadishu city, Somalia. These SMEs were purposively selected. The study adopted a census, and thus, all the SMEs were included in the analysis. Due to the unavailability of secondary data in Somalia, the study relied on primary data, for which questionnaires were carefully designed using the existing scales and available literature. This questionnaire was then administered to the respondents who shared their responses and were analyzed. Before collecting information from the respondents, the study adopted the questionnaire in the pilot testing stage to ensure that it was reliable and valid. The main analysis for this study includes means and standard deviations (descriptive statistics) and correlation and regression analysis. The results were that access to credit (p<0.05), bank deposits (p<0.05), and customer savings (p<0.05) were all significant predictors of increase in profits and stability of sales. The study concludes that banking sector development is a significant predictor of the financial performance of small and medium enterprises. (c) 2023 The Authors. Published by IASE. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).