Federal agencies handed out more than $83billion in contracts to small businesses in 2013, allowing Washington tosurpass its goal of awarding 23 percent of government jobs to small businessfor the first time since 2005. How did the government manage to reach thatrarely met goal? Fudging the numbers may have helped, according to a reportissued last week.

Agencies overstated the amounts awarded by almost $2 billion,the Small Business Administration's Office of the Inspector General said in a Sept.24 report (PDF) that focused on set-aside programs for minority-ownedbusinesses, as well as businesses located in poor neighborhoods. That includes$428 million that went to companies that shouldn't have gotten set-asides, andan additional $1.5 billion to companies that qualified for the programs whenthey won the awards but no longer qualified last year, when agencies werecutting checks. "In addition to overstating the small business goaling dollars,this may have also prevented other eligible firms from being awarded thesecontract actions," the report says.

The SBA "generally concurred" with the findings, the reportsays.

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