The effect of Omid Entrepreneurship Fund financial support on investment and employment functions in rural areas with emphasis on small and medium enterprises

Introduction Increase in unemployment rate, along with growing resource depletion, is one of the economic-cultural challenges of many developing countries, including Iran. These problems are more deep and complex in rural areas. In other words, our society has been suffering from a lack of production for many years, and consequently, a high unemployment rate in rural areas, which has led to an increase in the rate of migration from rural to urban areas. Thus, in order to provide mutual financial support to small and medium-sized businesses with the priority of creating employment in rural and less privileged areas, it was licensed as a non-governmental public institution. The fund, as a support leverage of public governance, provides financial support to skilled individuals, females heads of households, villagers, elites and entrepreneurs in the form of creating a market-oriented micro-business in the form of “synergistic networking” with strategies for attracting public participation through the creation and development of local micro-funds, the development of charitable partnerships and the use of the capacity and economic benefits of the country in the development of micro and household industries with the priority of rural areas. How to finance and invest by public and private groups, individual or group borrowers will be important and fundamental issues that play a decisive role in the success of the operation of micro-financial institutions because credit limits and how to provide collateral by borrowers and finance the institutions is one of the issues that play an important role in the success of these institutions. The more these institutions have a well-codified and well-planned program to overcome these limitations, the higher their success rate. This leads to the growth and development of rural areas. Finally, sustainable development will be accompanied by an increase in investment, production, employment, income, reducing the unemployment rate, equitable distribution of income, and etc. For this reason, the role of financing micro, small, medium businesses in Omid Entrepreneurship Fund as an organization for providing financial services, and examining how it affects the investment functions of this sector is of great importance in the issue of creating employment in rural areas and preventing migration to cities. Therefore, this study seeks to ask whether the financial services of Omid Entrepreneurship Fund have a positive effect on investment and employment functions in rural areas? Methodology The present article is descriptive-analytical in terms of purpose, application method, and conducted with econometric method. Its statistical population includes all small and medium workshops located in urban and rural parts of the country, which had less than fifty employees at the time of sampling. Also, the required information and data have been extracted through the library and field methods. Data related to SME financing discussion have been extracted and used from Omid Entrepreneurship Fund statistics system, as well as data related to value-added variables, number of employees, annual and per capita service compensation costs, investment value, in addition to statistics related to the ICT section, the two-digit ISIC classification codes was collected from the Statistics Center of Iran. Adding to these, the price adjustment rate was provided from the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran. International Standard Classification of All Economic Activities (ISIC) consists of a coherent and uniform structure for the classification of economic activities based on a set of internationally agreed concepts, definitions, principles and rules of classification. This classification provides a comprehensive framework within which economic data can be collected and reported in a format designed for the purposes of economic analysis, decision-making, and policy-making. The classification structure provides a standard format for organizing detailed information about the state of a countrychr('39')s economy according to economic principles and awareness. Discussion and conclusion The value added of small and medium businesses has an upward trend from 2008 to 2014 and only in 2015 due to inflation and other fluctuations in the commodity market has decreased. In other words, it can be said that in all the study years, the value added trend has been an upward trend and only in the last year, due to the weakening of the power of small and medium enterprises, they have had a decreasing value added. Value added in 2008 started with 34.870 billion Rials and by 2014 has almost tripled to 92.292 billion Rials and decreased in 2015 to 84.913 billion Rials. The value of investment in small and medium enterprises, such as the value added of this sector, has increased until 2014, but has decreased in 2015. In fact, investment in small and medium enterprises in 2008 has increased from 6.421 billion Rials to 13.589 billion Rials in 2014, i.e., more than double the increase. but in 1394 this figure decreased to 11.336 billion Rials with a declining trend. One of the reasons for this is the effect of high inflation and reduced activity in small and medium enterprises due to the lack of profitability obtained from this type of economic activity. Given the results of the estimated models, it is concluded that the coefficients and parameters of the model, have a logical relationship with job creation in rural areas, despite being significant at an acceptable level. Thus, the variable coefficient of capital price has a negative relationship with employment in this sector. The price of capital, investment in this sector has increased, which leads to an increase in production, hence growth rural employment, which is a positive relationship for production or value added and labor wages in this sector. This will lead to increase in production or value added and labor wages, employment in villages.  As a matter of fact, the amount of employment elasticity in rural areas is 0.83% regarding production or value added, which means that with an increase of 1% value added, employment in this sector increases by 0.83%. This elasticity (elasticity of labor force employment) for compensation of labor force services and the price of capital is 0.15 and 0.07 percent, respectively. That is, in exchange for one percent increase in the compensating cost for labor services, employment increases by 0.15 percent, and in exchange for one percent reduction in interest rates, 0.07 percent employment increases.