The Small Business Administration (SBA) announced increased size standards for 70 industries on Thursday. Size standards have gone up for firms in Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing and Hunting, Finance and Insurance, Management of Companies and Enterprises, Arts, Entertainment, Recreation, and Support Services for Mining industries.

Some of the new size standards were raised to as much as 1,500 employees, despite the fact that according to the U.S. Census Bureau, 98 percent of all U.S. firms have less than 100 employees, and 89 percent have less than 20 employees.

While the SBA has increased size standards for 70 industries, they’ve continuously failed to adopt any policies to stop the diversion of federal small business contracts to Fortune 500 firms. The SBA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) has named the problem the top management challenge at the agency for the past nine consecutive years, but nearly a decade later the SBA has yet to address it.

In 2005 the SBA OIG referred to the diversion of small business contracts to corporate giants as “One of the most important challenges facing the SBA and the entire federal government.”

After investigating an SBA program, the General Accountability Office (GAO) stated, “By failing to hold firms accountable, SBA and contracting agencies have sent a message to the contracting community that there is no punishment or consequences for committing fraud.”

ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN have all done investigations that found billions of dollars in small business contracts going to the largest companies in the world such as IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Apple, Exxon Mobil and thousands more.

According to the latest information by the Federal Procurement Data System, of the top 100 small business contractors for fiscal year 2012, 71 were actually large businesses.

“There have been over a dozen federal investigations that have found billions in federal small business contracts are being diverted to corporate giants on a monthly basis, I think it would have been more appropriate for them to adopt policy to address those rampant abuses,” said Lloyd Chapman, president of the American Small Business League.

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