During the recent pandemic COVID-19, access to finance has been recognized as one of the most important impediments for the survival of small and medium enterprises. This article presents certain aspects of development in the regulatory and legal frameworks for SMEs exchanges in developing countries by offering long-term development strategy. It aims to study the opportunities that COVID-19 offers to find out how emerging economies can tailor their regulations tostimulate the market, and at the same time preserve market stability and investor protection considerations. It studies SMEs exchanges regulations and analyzes the constraints imposed by the current market regulations in a number of developing economies. A comparative SMEs market performance study was conducted by comparing the SMEs capital market performance before and during COVID-19. The data analysis showed an increase in SMEs market indexes during the pandemic that necessitates revising SMEs capital market regulations considering it as SMEs defensive weapon against any cash difficulties that most SMEs faced or will face during the current pandemic.The study proved that inadequate regulations underdetermine the ecosystem and result in a weak secondary market that critically affects the primary market meanwhile, regulatory attention must be paid not only to issuers and investors but to the entire market participants who constitute small puzzle pieces without which the real capital market reform picture cannot be seen.The article presents a financial sector development strategy,one size fits all regulations can never be fair, designing regulations is rather an art that needs focus and contemplation.
Key words: Small and Medium Enterprises Capital Market Regulations-SMEs Exchange- COVID-19
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