SMALL MANUFACTURING ENTERPRISES IN EGYPT

Years of work and field studies by countless researchers have made clear that small manufacturing enterprises in developing countries are extraordinarily diverse. Our interest in this question arose from an attempt to make sense of information collected in a study of small manufacturing enterprises in Egypt. The study involved a door-to-door census of small producers in a random sample of urban as well as rural locations in two Egyptian governorates (Fayoum and Kalyubiya). That enumeration was followed by weekly or twice-weekly collection over a full year (1982) of more detailed data on production, sales, input purchases, and labor use for 426 producers in 13 selected industries. We review briefly the approach used by other selected studies in classifying small enterprisees into meaningful categories; set forth and explain our own approach to this question; use that framework to examine the major characteristics of small enterprises in Egypt show how those characteristics affect future prospects; and draw some project and policy implications. -from Authors