ASSESMENT OF THE PRACTICE OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT SERVICES (BDS) IN GURAGE ZONE

Abstract

Business development services as one mechanism of enterprises development have been thought of as a wide array of non-financial services designed to help small and micro enterprises to overcome barriers and increase their profitability and contribution to job opportunity creation by improving their performance. The overall objective of this study was to assess the practice of Business Development Services in the case of Guraghe zone Administration. The study used an explanatory and Descriptive research design with purposive and Area (clusters) sampling technique. The population of the study would consisted BDS facilitators, BDS co-coordinators, BDS providers & Micro Enterprises managers (BDS users) of Guraghe Zone Business Development Services, specially (Wolkite, Butajira, cheha, Enor and Kebena). The finding of the research shows that, a total of 340 (95.2%) BDS facilitators, BDS co-coordinators, BDS providers & Micro Enterprises managers (BDS users) out of 357 respondents were participated in the study. In addition to this, 8 Focus Group Discussion (key Informants).The chi-square test result reveals that, the practice of BDS based on types of BDS delivered to the micro enterprises, the study indicates that among the different aspects of BDS only some (marketing assistance, information technology, advisory & training, alternative sources of finances, enhance personal skills, access to infrastructure, and access inputs service) are provided. Add to this, significant level of agreement is found between BDS provider & users respondent ratings of the independent variables, whereas, no significant agreement was found between the respondents in ratings of information technology. Based on the above findings, wolkite, and butajira town administrations BDS coordination unit have delivered special BDS service to theirMEs with compared to other weredas & town administration, therefore, taking these better service experience to other weredas and town administration, so as to expanding in all dimension of service quality, so as to fill service gap in the zone. The researcher also forwards his recommendation for further researches in the area of the findings were limited due to time, budget and geographic coverage. Therefore, this study is initial point for further investigations of guraghe zone to consolidate the results.