The US government has awarded a $128 million contract earmarked for small businesses to corporate giant Bechtel Bettis, a pressure group has claimed.

The American Small Business League (ASBL) slammed the award, noting that Bechtel is a Fortune 500 corporation which had sales worth $31.4 billion during fiscal year (FY) 2008. The firm maintains more than 44,000 employees, but the government's database records that the contract as going to a "small business."

ASBL notes that, during the 2008 presidential election cycle, President Barack Obama promised to, "end the diversion of federal small business contracts to corporate giants." Yet to date, the ASBL claims that the Obama administration has "refused to adopt any policy or legislation to honour that campaign promise".

"As a result, every month the Obama administration diverts billions of dollars in federal small business contracts away from legitimate small businesses where most Americans work and into the hands of corporate giants," ASBL claimed.

Since 2003, twenty-five federal investigations have uncovered the diversion of billions of dollars a month in federal small business contracts to some of the largest corporations in the world, the pressure group argued. ASBL estimates that every year this issue diverts more than $100 billion in federal small business contracts away from legitimate small businesses and into the hands of multinational corporations.

"The most recent data available from the Federal Procurement Data System - Next Generation (FPDS-NG) indicates that a majority of small business contracts awarded by the Obama Administration have gone to Fortune 500 firms and thousands of large businesses in the United States and Europe," ASBL stated.

"In addition to Bechtel, Obama officials have awarded small business contracts to: General Dynamics, Xerox, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, British Aerospace (BAE), Dell Computer and French giant Thales Communications."

Source:  http://www.procurementleaders.com/news/latestnews/427-small-bus-us-govt-contracts/