Entrepreneurs worldwide often face obstacles in financing their businesses, hindering their ability to grow. Government procurement offers an opportunity to access lucrative contracts and benefit from a procurement auditing process that could enhance access to finance. Likewise, externally audited financial statements can enhance credibility and lessen financing hurdles. We examine whether government procurement contracts and external audit certifications jointly influence financing access and whether ownership, size, and firm age matter. We find that access to finance is more likely to be an obstacle to the operations of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with government procurement contracts than those without such contracts, regardless of whether they seek external audit certification. Additionally, the effect of external audit certification on the likelihood of access to finance being an obstacle to SME operations reduces sharply with foreign ownership, size, and age for SMEs involved in government procurement. We also find that the impact of government procurement contracts reverses for SMEs in low- and lower-middle-income countries. Our findings have policy implications, especially with the growing implementation of affirmative action programs to promote the involvement of SMEs in government procurement.

世界各地的企业家在为企业融资时经常面临障碍，阻碍了他们的发展能力。政府采购提供了获得利润丰厚的合同的机会，并从可以增强融资渠道的采购审计流程中受益。同样，经过外部审计的财务报表可以提高可信度并减少融资障碍。我们研究政府采购合同和外部审计认证是否共同影响融资渠道以及所有权、规模和公司年龄是否重要。我们发现，与没有政府采购合同的中小企业相比，获得融资更有可能成为其运营的障碍，无论它们是否寻求外部审计认证。此外，随着参与政府采购的中小企业的外资所有权、规模和年龄的增加，外部审计认证对获得融资的可能性的影响也大大降低，成为中小企业运营的障碍。我们还发现，政府采购合同对低收入和中低收入国家中小企业的影响是相反的。我们的研究结果具有政策意义，特别是随着平权行动计划的不断实施，以促进中小企业参与政府采购。