The paper studied small and medium manufacturing enterprises in 12 South Asian developing and neighboring countries: Bangladesh, Cambodia, Lao, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. It has seen the intensity of manufacturing enterprises and their production and export performance. The paper found that Bangladesh, Nepal, Myanmar, Pakistan, Lao, and Cambodia are poor performers; Thailand, India, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Indonesia are the high performers; and Sri Lanka stands in between. The paper used the data for 2018 in most of the cases. The data were available from national and international organizations directly relevant to SMEs. The main contribution of the paper is the explaining of the role of knowledge-base such as belief and knowledge, faith and reason, and art and aesthetics on SME and entrepreneurship development. R&D, creativity rank, human development rank, entrepreneurship development rank, and government expenditure on religious affairs gave some evidence in support of the claim.