The economies of the Gulf monarchies combine features of advanced and emerging market economies in a peculiar way. On the one hand, income levels are high, the private sector is capital-rich, infrastructure is well developed, national populations are fairly well educated and large companies are often quite professionally run. On the other hand, however, private sector wage levels for medium- to low-skill jobs are very low, and companies below the top tier are frequently run by expatriates, generally developing country nationals. This leads to a large sector of small and micro-enterprises that is often beyond the regulatory reach of the state (resulting in the non-registration of employees and many other things). This unique situation means that neither the SME policy ?recipes? from developed countries nor from the developing world can be replicated or applied one-to-one. Thus Gulf economies offer a rather unique combination of challenges and opportunities that requires tailor-made policy approaches. BRIEF studied the SME environment of five Middle East & North African (MENA) Countries namely Egypt, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia.