Introduction

The Small and Medium scale Enterprise (SME) are recognized worldwide as engines of economic growth. The commonly perceived merits often emphasized for their promotion especially in the developing countries like Bangladesh include their relatively high labor intensity, dependence on indigenous skills and technology, contributions to entrepreneurship development and innovativeness and growth of industrial linkages. The case for fostering SME growth in Bangladesh is irrefutable as these industries offer bright prospects for creating large-scale employment and income earning opportunities at relatively low cost for the unemployed especially in the rural areas strengthening the efforts towards achieving high and sustained economic growth which are critically important prerequisites for triggering an exit from endemic poverty and socio-economic deprivation. These promotional arguments for the SMEs, while universally emphasized are often put forward by their ardent advocates in a small versus large context and thus arouse serious debates concerning their economic viability. Much of such controversies may, however breakdown if the intrinsic virtues specific to SMEs and unavailable to large-scale industries are correctly identified and carefully exploited. A combined interaction of the forces of product-mix, location factors, technological advantages and market advantages create opportunities for SMEs to grow and prosper at all levels of development which are often ignored by the traditional approach to their economic strengths and development potentials. The growing economic significance of the SMEs as sources of new business creation and employment generation in the developed, countries especially since 1970s is now widely recognized in an increasingly growing volume of literature. The recent structural shifts in industrial production from the Florist