An assessment of business environments and their effects on small and medium enterprises in Kaduna State-Nigeria

This paper assessed the impact of some external business environment on Small and Medium Enterprises of Kaduna state of Nigeria. The study population embraced SMEs registered with Small and Medium Enterprise Development Agency of Nigeria in Kaduna State with the total of 904. Taro Yamane formula was used to obtain a sample size of 400. The study takes on survey design. Findings revealed that infrastructural facilities have a significant and positive effect on SME’s service quality (0.142: p= 0.067<0.05).The government taxation policy have a significant and positive effect on sales revenue (0.146: p= 0.314<0.05). On the government/institutional support variable, result shows that it have a positive but no significant influence on job creation (0.544: p= 0.000>0.05). The analysis of insecurity and market growth shows a negative and significant effect of insecurity on SMEs market growth potentials (0.038: p= 0.769<0.05). At tail end, infrastructural facilities, taxation policy, and insecurity had a significant effect on service quality, sales revenue, and market growth respectively, government/institutional support have no significant effect on job creation. It was recommended that in order to supplement on the whole performance, SMEs should always make sure adequate scan of the external business environment to identify possible threats and opportunities surrounded by their working environment, In addition the government should charge a lower tax to augment increase in revenue base of SMEs. Also, infrastructural facilities in Kaduna state, should be given appropriate concentration, in the same vein, there is a need for the government to endorse extra attempt in conditions of policy arrangement and accomplishment.