CAMEO is Disappointed by President Obama’s FY 2013 Budget for Small Business
CAMEO believes that President Obama’s FY 2013 Budget does next to nothing to help the overwhelming majority of small business – the very small businesses with five or fewer employees that make up 88% of the nation’s businesses.
Contact
Heidi Pickman
415-992-4484
hpickman (at) microbiz (dot) org
San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) February 14, 2012
According to CAMEO – the California Association for Micro Enterprise Opportunity, President Obama’s FY 2013 Budget will not help nine-tenths of small businesses. The Budget contains support for small business in name only. However, the recommended cuts to programs will hurt the majority of small businesses.
The President’s FY 2013 Budget increases small business access to capital, but “proposes to terminate the PRIME Technical Assistance program” and reduce business technical assistance programs by eight percent.
It’s these business assistance programs – the mini-MBA’s, the programs that teach business owners to strategize a viable business model and write a well thought out business plan– that ensure the success of 88% of the nation’s businesses, or the 25.5 million businesses that are very small or micro-businesses with five or fewer employees.
Micro Enterprise Development Organizations provide training and services to a these entrepreneurs: the unemployed, the college graduate unable to find a job, women, minorities, and low income individuals. For these businesses to succeed, they need business management tools and skills, they need business networks and support systems, and they need access to capital.
“The first step to success for locally grown and start-up micro-businesses is business assistance: training and mentoring for new entrepreneurs,” says Claudia Viek, C.E.O. of CAMEO. “We surveyed our members, and found that when business owners receive business assistance, they have an 80% success rate and create two jobs on average over three-to-five years.”
It’s fairly well-established in the business research literature that the success rate for business start-ups is under 50%.
Increases in the Treasury and SBA loan programs have increased access to capital for the very small businesses. However, ‘access to capital’ must include business training and credit assistance or there won’t be a pipeline of loan ready businesses. The two go hand in hand.