With 323,000 employees and earnings of $17 billion, General Electric is by far the biggest ``small business'' in Florida.

It won that status when the Veterans Affairs Administration at Bay Pines Medical Center in St. Petersburg signed two contracts with GE in March 2008 worth $87,299 for ``irradiation apparatuses.''

Under government guidelines, manufacturers of such machines must have fewer than 500 employees to qualify as small. GE has 646 times that many workers.

Even so, the company was registered as ``small'' by contracting officers on both occasions.

Asked about the contracts, VA Spokeswoman Shilpa Patel-Teague said it was simply a data-entry error.

``There was incorrect information in our vendor file, and we are in the process of making those changes,'' she said. That particular branch of the VA signs more than 4,000 contracts a year, she said.

Bay Pines wasn't alone in considering the Fortune 500 company a small business -- General Electric was registered as ``small'' on at least 14 contracts nationwide during that period.

Source:  http://www.miamiherald.com/news/more-info/v-fullstory/story/1276866.html