Author: Patrick Conway, Manju Kedia Shah.

This report forms part of the findings of the Zambia Business Survey (ZBS). The ZBS comprised two separate surveys. The MSME Survey was a nationally representative survey across all nine provinces of individuals who owned and ran their own businesses and employed up to 50 individuals. The supplementary Large Business Survey (LBS) was a survey of 161 large enterprises employing 51 or more individuals. The results of the ZBS are in the main summary report. The profile and productivity of Zambian businesses. Analysis of the data resulted in four technical paper. This report examines the productivity of Zambian enterprises. The report has three goals. First, it will identify the salient characteristics of private-sector small business activity in Zambia. Second, it will identify and analyze the key constraints holding back small-business performance. Third, it will identify policies and programs that will enable these small businesses to grow rapidly in the medium term. The remainder of this report is organized as follows: The first section describes enterprise characteristics, including the sectors in which firms operate, their location, employment characteristics and revenues. The second section discusses measures of firm performance, and examines dispersions in levels of performance between MSMEs versus large firms, and also dispersions in performance within the MSME sector. Section 3 discusses the reasons for differences in performance, and presents the econometric estimates which highlight factors that are significant drivers of firm efficiency and competitiveness. Section 4 presents policy recommendations. An appendix describes the economic theory underlying the econometric tests.