SME and entrepreneurship activity has undergone a series of major shocks in recent years, impacting SME and entrepreneurs’ growth trajectories, investments and even their survival. Strengthening the resilience of SMEs and entrepreneurs and their ability to manage future shocks and transitions has emerged as a critical policy priority in this context.

The green transition is a pressing imperative for SMEs, who must meet their diverse financing needs to achieve net zero. SMEs need to be able to navigate a robust and supportive sustainable finance ecosystem to advance on this path. In addition to public and private finance providers, regulators, standard setters and policy makers, the SME sustainable finance ecosystem also includes providers of non-financial support and ESG intermediaries.

All ecosystem actors must play their part. Governments need to take the SME perspective into account systematically when developing regulations, financial products and tailored support. FIs will need to provide tailored financing solutions that link financing conditions to sustainability performance. To do so, they need to obtain relevant data from SME clients, without placing an undue burden on them. SMEs themselves need to be incentivised to invest in greening and seek out the related financing.

The discussions at this roundtable explored the key actions governments and other actors must take to foster a sustainable finance ecosystem to support SMEs net zero transition and resilience to future shocks. They fed into the Platform’s inputs to the OECD Meeting of the Committee on SMEs and Entrepreneurship at Ministerial level, taking place in Paris on 27-28 June. Discussions centred around the following key questions:

• What is needed to strengthen the SME sustainable finance ecosystem to accelerate SMEs’ green transition?
• What are the key actions that governments and other actors need to take to engage and accompany SMEs?
• How can we build linkages between SMEs and the diverse actors in the ecosystem?
• How can the OECD Platform on Financing SMEs for Sustainability contribute to meeting these objectives?