Beyond the Informal Elephant: Competitiveness of Micro and Small Enterprises in the Mena Region

The urban informal sector is often still looked at as an elephant (Mead and Morrisson, 1996), which we may not be able to define precisely, but we know it when we see it. However, urban informal sector research deals with micro and small enterprises outside the official legal framework. By now we can build on 25 years of case studies, sample surveys and research on the topic. What comes out is a change in emphasis. The main issues we are interested in have changed over time, as can be seen in Box 1 (based on Van Dijk, 1997). In that overview the main conclusion is that what counts at the moment is being competitive. In a global economy even the informal sector is confronted with imports of competing products.