Effect of External Environment on the Performance of Small and Medium Scale Enterprises in Benue State

The study assessed the effect of External Environment on the Performance of Small and Medium Scale Enterprises in Benue State. Primary and secondary data were used for the study. Primary data were obtained by the use of a well-structured questionnaire. The study made use of 316 respondents from the SMEs in the selected geopolitical zones in Benue. Demographic data obtained from the study were analyzed by the use of descriptive statistics such as percentages, frequencies and multiple regressions Analysis. The result also shows that a positive relationship between Political environment, Technological environment and competitive environment with Small and medium scale enterprises performance in Benue State and it is in line with a priori expectation and it is statistically significant (p<0.05). This implies that these external environments dimension significantly contributes in varying degree to the performance of SMEs in Benue State. The coefficient of determination R2 for the study is 77.0% indicating that 77.0% of the variations in the model can be explained by the explanatory variables of the model while 23.0% can be attributed to unexplained variation captured by the stochastic term while the Durbin Watson statistics does not suggest that autocorrelation was a problem in the model of the study. It was also recommended among others that since economic environment made a negative contribution to  the performance of small and medium scale enterprises in Benue State, management of SMEs should ensure that all factors caused by economic environment is resolved to  enhance effective performance of SMEs in Benue State.