The consumer rights advocacy group Public Citizen released aninvestigative reportduring National Small Business Weekaccusing the Small Business Administration (SBA) of using accounting tricks andfunky statistics to artificially inflate the number of contracts awarded tosmall businesses.

Public Citizen's premise,based on earlier work conducted by the American Small Business League (ASBL),centers on two findings:

1.      The Small BusinessAct mandates that smallbusinesses receive a minimum of 23% of the total value of all federalcontracts. The SBA uses asignificantly lower budget number than the actual total procurement budget that greatly inflatesthe percentage of federal contracts to small businesses.

2.     The Federal Government greatlyexaggerates the volume of federal contracts awarded to small businesses by including billions of dollars infederal contracts to Fortune 500 firms, their subsidiaries and thousands of large businesses. The SmallBusiness Act clearly defines a small business as being independently owned andhaving no more than 1500 employees. The definition independentlyowned would exclude any Fortune 500 firms since they are publicly owned and obviously have more than 1500employees.

GovExec reportsthat "In 2013, seven of the 10 largest federal contractors received at leastone contract that SBA counted toward fulfillment of small business goals, thereport said. Of the 100 contractors receiving the most federal dollars countedtoward small business goals in 2012, 71 did not meet the government'sstandards to qualify as small businesses, the [Public Citizen] report said,citing the American Small Business League."

To view full article, click here: http://www.procas.com/blog/index.php/headlines-sba-accused-of-shortchanging-small-business-contractors/