Thursday, May 24, 2018

Federal Government Achieves Small Business Contracting Goal in Fiscal Year 2017

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) announced Tuesday that the Federal government met its small business federal contracting goal for the fifth consecutive year, awarding 23.88 percent of federal contracting dollars to small businesses. That 24 percent (rounded) works out to $105.7 billion, an increase of $6 billion over the previous year (fiscal year 2016) and the first time the total contracted amount surpassed $100 billion.

Of the five categories tracked (small business, small disadvantaged business, service disabled veteran owned small business, women owned small business and HUBZone business, the only two categories where the federal government did not meets its goal were women owned small business (5% goal vs. 4.7% actual) and the HUBZone designation (3% goal vs 1.7% actual).

Looking at the data by agency, eight of 25 or so agencies tracked received an 'A' score (or higher) including the big four: Defense Department, NASA, Homeland Security, and Energy. The Agency for International Development (AID) received only a 'C' rating.

If there was any disappointment in these scorecard numbers its the fact that while the dollars increased, the actual percentages went down from the previous fiscal year. Small businesses got a smaller percentage of a bigger pie. Of course one wouldn't know that by reading SBA's press release. It requires a little digging to uncover.

You can read more about SBA's report card here.

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