SBA Gives Generous Scores for Small Business Achievements

The government missed its Fiscal Year 2016 HUBZone goal by a country mile, and didn’t hit the 5% WOSB goal, either. But according to the SBA, the government deserves an “A” for its FY 2016 small business achievements.

That’s some rather generous scoring, wouldn’t you say?

On May 18 ,the SBA issued a press release announcing that the government had exceeded its 23% small business goal for the fourth straight year. The SBA’s report card gave the government an overall “A” grade for its achievements. Among individual agencies, 18 received grades of “A+” or “A,” four received a “B,” and one earned a “C.” No agency received a “D” or “F.”

Exceeding the 23% goal is a good thing, and something we shouldn’t take for granted. It wasn’t that long ago that I was blogging about a string of failures in that regard. But are the FY 2016 results really “A” level work? Let’s take a look at some of the not-so-great specifics:

• Overall small business achievement was down significantly: from 25.75% in FY 2015 to 24.34% in FY 2016.
• Small disadvantaged achievement dropped too: from 10.06% in FY 2015 to 9.52% in FY 2016.
• After hitting the 5% WOSB goal in FY 2015, the government backslid. The FY 2016 result: 4.79%.
• HUBZone awards took another step backward: from 1.81% in FY 2015 to 1.67% in 2015. That’s right: the government barely exceeded half of the 3% HUBZone goal.  READ MORE….