The OECD-IDRC study New Entrepreneurs and High-Growth Enterprises in the Middle East and North Africa (2013) concludes that, in addition to the general unfavourable business climate, both women's economic participation and entrepreneurs’ access to finance are amongst the most important factors affecting entrepreneurship negatively in the region. This is all the more important as the creation, survival and growth of SMEs have been negatively affected by socio-political changes that have taken place in a number of MENA economies since 2011, coupled with the global financial crisis. While banks in the MENA region are generally considered to be more averse to risk and more conservative than in other parts of the world, they tend to be both financially stable and modernising, and could certainly play a greater role in lending to SMEs. Indeed, bank financing is the main source of external financing for SMEs.