- SBA announces that a record $145.7 billion in federal contracts were awarded to small businesses in the 2020 fiscal year
- Despite the increase in funding, the share of small business contracting fell slightly from the 2019 fiscal year
- SBA Administrator Isabella Casillas Guzman said the administration is working to improve contracting opportunities and make them more equitable
Summary by Dirk Langeveld
A record $145.7 billion in federal contracts were awarded to small businesses in the 2020 fiscal year, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration. At the same time, the agency acknowledged that fewer small businesses received prime contracts and that contracting goals fell short in several areas.
Overall contracting awards were up $13 billion from the 2019 fiscal year, and 26.01 percent of federal contracts went to small businesses. This exceeded the federal government’s goal of 23 percent, but was down from 26.5 percent in the 2019 fiscal year.
SBA Administrator Isabella Casillas Guzman said the agency is working to improve small business access to federal contracting opportunities. The Biden administration has also set goals to make procurement opportunities more equitable and increase the share of contracts awarded to small disadvantaged businesses by 50 percent over next five years.
The SBA’s Federal Procurement Scorecard included the following information:
- 10.54 percent of contracts went to small disadvantaged businesses, more than twice the goal of 5 percent and up from 10.29 percent in the 2019 fiscal year
- 4.28 percent of contracts went to service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses, exceeding the government’s 3 percent goal but down from 4.39 percent in the 2019 fiscal year
- The government fell slightly short of its goals of awarding at least 5 percent of contracts to women-owned small businesses and 3 percent to HUBZone small businesses; 4.85 percent and 2.44 percent of contracts went to these businesses, respectively
- $82.8 billion in subcontracts were awarded to small businesses, representing 32.46 percent of all subcontracting; this was down from 33.27 percent in the 2019 fiscal year, and the government fell short of its subcontracting goals for all but women-owned businesses
- Eight of 24 federal agencies earned an A+ rating on the scorecard, but scores fell from A in the 2019 fiscal year to C in the 2020 fiscal year for the Department of Defense and from A to D for the Department of Housing and Urban Development
