ASSESSMENT OF THE AVAILABILITY OF EXTERNAL SOURCES OF FINANCING FOR SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED ENTERPRISES IN MODERN CONDITIONS

In the current conditions of economic development in Russia, when crisis phenomena are observed in many industries and sectors of the economy, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are facing the problem of financing not only new projects aimed at business development, but also of replenishing working capital to ensure current activities; there is a shortage of financial resources. In these conditions, these enterprises are forced to turn to external sources. The financial market offers many sources of replenishment of financial resources of such organizations, but their cost, as shown by the conducted research, the results of which are presented in this article, becomes high, and accessibility for SMEs, on the contrary, is low, especially during economic crises. The work evaluates various sources of external financing used by organizations in the Russian market. Some of them are traditional and are quite often used by organizations, such as bank lending, leasing, factoring. And some of these instruments can be classified as non-traditional, but deserving attention — they are crowdfunding, P2P lending. The authors of the study pay special attention to state support resources, which can be received by SMEs through various forms (for example, lending through funds under regional governments, through subsidies from state and municipal authorities, etc.), but which have a lower cost and the availability of which should increase in crisis conditions. The paper provides a comparative description of all proposed sources of external financing, assessing the cost of most of them and their availability.

small and medium-sized business, financing of organizations, sources of financing, bank lending, non-bank financing, state support, subsidies to small enterprises, prob- lems of financing small business, credit line, leasing, factoring

Shchukina T. V., Kulizhskaya Z. S., Gorchakova M. E. Assessment of the availability of external sources of financing for small and medium-sized enterprises in modern conditions. Biznes. Obrazovanie. Pravo = Business. Education. Law. 2025;2(71):103—109. DOI: 10.25683/VOLBI.2025.71.1287.