September 29, 2008
Washington, D.C. -
U.S. Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee Ranking Member Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine) today expressed her deep disappointment and dismay that the Small Business Administration (SBA) will this week publish a final rule that will not effectively implement the congressionally-mandated Women’s Procurement Program
"I find it inexcusable that after wasting nearly eight years before issuing a deeply flawed proposed rule, the SBA has now finalized a rule that will not implement the Women’s Procurement Program as Congress intended," said Senator Snowe. "By issuing a final rule that will potentially assist women-owned businesses in just 31 of 140 industries, the SBA’s final rule amounts to little more than a fig leaf. Women entrepreneurs, who contribute so many jobs to our nation’s economy, deserve a final contracting rule that will actually help them receive their fair share of business with the government. The SBA must reexamine the over 1,700 comments I and others made to its original proposal and come back with a plan to properly establish this program."
SBA’s original proposed rule was fundamentally flawed because it would have only applied to 4 out of 140 business industries. Although the SBA’s new rule may ultimately increase the number of eligible business industries from 4 to just 31, this still falls far short of enabling women-owned businesses to fairly and fully compete for federal contracts.
Under present law, the Federal government has a 5 percent women’s contracting goal. To help address the underrepresentation of women entrepreneurs in the government marketplace, Congress in 2000 established the Women’s Procurement Program. For almost eight years, the SBA has failed to appropriately execute this initiative. Notably, in Fiscal Year 2006, women-owned businesses were only awarded 3.4 percent of Federal contracting dollars, resulting in the failure to meet the 5 percent government-wide contracting goal by nearly 33 percent.
On February 7, 2008, Senators Snowe and Dole introduced the "Small Business Women’s Procurement Program Improvement Act" (S. 2608), which would amend the Small Business Act to address the fundamental flaws in the SBA’s proposed rule. http://snowe.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=B00D31F9-802A-23AD-456C-295E6A120F16
1 comment:
It sounds like the government is really trying to help women entrepreneurs, and that's a good start. Surely soon they will get everything figured out. Then again, it is the US government. That might never happen.
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