Barriers to SMEs participation in public procurement in Nigeria: some preliminary results

The aim of this study is to develop an instrument with which to measure the perception of barriers facing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in public procurement, based on a sample of 120 SMEs in Nigeria. Using exploratory factor analysis (EFA), four factors were extracted, namely; information obscurity, incapability, ignorance of procedures and arduous and stringent process. Reliability and item analysis offers support for the internal consistency and the discriminatory power of items that represent the factors. Above all, it was found that information obscurity and incapability have the highest mean scores, signifying that these factors are perceived to be the foremost barriers facing SMEs in public procurement. A key result of this study is that it generates explanatory theories on SME barriers to public procurement and offers factorial hypotheses in a form suitable for subsequent testing.