The impacts of smes on regional development: The case study of Van

All of the developed and developing countries have the problem of regional imbalance. Countries are applying various regional development politics depending on their socio-economic and cultural characteristics to overcome regional imbalances.SMEs, as important production units that showed up after post- fordist production system took place of fordist production system as a consequence of economical crisis toward the end of 1970s, appear to be an important tool to overcome the regional imbalances. Because the SMEs are active throughout the country, they have considerable impacts on the regional development.In this study, the impacts of SMEs on the regional development were investigated by taking Van province as a case. Regression analysis was performed to test the impacts. The results of analysis indicated that SMEs have a slightly positive impact on economical development of the region. Various suggestions were made for the SMEs to be more effective on the regional development.