Impact of COVID 19 Pandemic on Small and Medium Sized Businesses (SMEs) in the GCC

Abstract

In all over the word, COVID 19 has created uncertainty and panic situation in almost all areas of life. Not only financial position of all countries has been badly affected but also internal and external social lives have also disturbed badly. If we talk about Bahrain and its economy, all large scale businesses in general and small and medium sized businesses have dropped up to their alarming position. Major victims of the COVID-19 outbreak are micro, small, and medium-sized businesses (SMEs). This article aims to assess the impact of COVID-19 outbreak on these businesses and provide policy recommendations to help SMEs in reducing business losses and survive through the crisis. The study adopted an exploratory methodology with comprehensively reviewing the available literature in the relevant field. Further, to add empirical evidence, we collected data from some Bahraini SMEs by administering an online questionnaire. The data were analyzed through descriptive statistics. The results indicate that most of the participating enterprises have been severely affected and they are facing several issues such as financial, supply chain disruption, decrease in demand, reduction in sales and profit, among others. Besides, over 75% of enterprises were neither prepared nor have any plan to handle such a situation. The findings of our study are consistent with previous studies. Based on the results of the research, different policy recommendations were proposed to ease the adverse effects of the outbreak on SMEs.