An empirical assessment of how the government policies influenced the performance of the SMEs in Zimbabwe
Abstract The Zimbabwean government came up with sound policies that were enacted in order to deliberately empower the SMEs, focusing on their performance, but the main challenge was on the communication, implementation and support of the policies hence their impact was highly insignificant. Primary data showed that the government managed to inform the elite group, its officers who are well versed with SME policies and government intentions were clearly communicated to all the experts in the SME sector, but this information did not reach out to the end users, SME implementers. The failure to inform the lower levels of the SME implementers with the policy information had a negative impact on the performance of SMEs and the government should take this as a learning curve and adopt new strategic framework that is poised to put right what has been incorrectly executed. The poor performance of Zimbabwean SMEs is basically an issue of the government commitment to its policies that support the economic growth. The SME policy issues that were not communicated to the implementers had a ripple negative effect across the whole economy of the country hence the study recommended the crafting of a more robust and home grown strategic framework that corrects the mistake that was made the government.