Microfinance services play significant role to the socio-economic development of developing countries. Studies tried to examine the impact of microfinance services on MSEs. However, most studies ignored comparing the performance of microfinance credit users with non-users. The objective of this study is, therefore, to examine the real effect of credit access on the performance of MSEs. The researcher employed mixed research approach. The study population for the survey was both credit user and non-user MSEs in the four major cities of Amhara region of Ethiopia. Purposive sampling, quota sampling and simple random sampling techniques were used sequentially to select respondents. Both closed ended and open-ended survey questionnaire, and semi-structured interview with higher officials of microfinance institutions were used as data collection tools. A two-sample mean-comparison test and Wilcoxon signed rank sum test with median value were also used to compare the performance difference between credit user and non-credit user MSEs. Thus, the result of the study indicated that the performance of credit user MSEs was significantly greater than from the performance of non-credit users. This finding leads to a suggestion that preparing infrastructure for easy credit access should be given due attention alongside its related orientations on how to use the credit. Keywords: microfinance, credit user, non-credit user, MSEs, Amhara Region, Ethiopi
