An Empirical study of the Capital Structure of Micro, Small and Medium Scale Enterprises in Nigeria (Review Completed - Accepted)
The analysis of capital structure of organizations has conventionally been applied to corporate entities. Previous studies on Microfinance have classified enterprises into two broad categories-the Small and Medium scale enterprises respectively. Micro-scale businesses are conventionally grouped with Small scale enterprises without specifically analysing their businesses. The research therefore examines the capital structure of micro, small and medium scale enterprises (MSMEs) as well as the factors influencing it. Primary data were collected by administering 300 copies of research instrument with a combination of cluster and simple random sampling techniques. The research discovered that there is a significant difference in the Capital Structure of Nigerian MSMEs; there is no statistically significant difference between the Capital Structure of Nigerian MSMEs at start-up and the Capital Structure at continuation; and the factors influencing the patronage of bank and non-bank finance providers among MSMEs do not significantly differ
Keywords: Capital Structure, Financial exclusion, Venture Capital, developing countries