Small Businesses Must Recertify, Says SBA
Small Businesses Must Recertify, Says SBA
New U.S. Small Business Administration regulations that took effect on June 30 require companies with federal contracts to re-certify their size status as small businesses,¯ according to the SBA.
The new regulations, states SBA, will increase opportunities for more small businesses to receive contracts from the federal government.
SBA is making tremendous progress improving federal contracting opportunities for small businesses, agency Administrator Steven Preston said. As part of those reforms, we are now implementing the re-certification rule announced last November to ensure federal rules properly classify small business contracts.
Too many businesses are still being counted as small business, says SBA, even after being acquired by large corporations, making them no longer eligible for specifically designated small business contracts, according to the federal agency.
As of June 30, any small business that merges or is acquired must immediately recertify its size. If the company is no longer small, the contract continues, but the federal government can no longer count it as a small¯ contract. Federal agencies will also immediately modify all existing long-term (over five years) contracts to require small businesses to recertify their size status for acquisitions, mergers and novation requests and to recertify their size status prior to an option being exercised, according to SBA officials. Under these rules, as of June 30 most large businesses credited with small contracts will no longer be counted as small. Nearly all the remaining large businesses will be scrubbed from the database within a year, says SBA, adding that the agency will have to step up efforts to identify and contract with new small businesses to meet their small business contracting goals 23 percent as directed by Congress.
Also, as part of its effort to increase the pool of small businesses eligible for federal contracts, the SBA will later this summer launch its Quick Market Search tool, an enhancement to the Dynamic Small Business Search database, part of the Central Contractor Registration database which is a component of the government-wide Integrated Acquisition Environment. The Quick Market Search tool will allow contracting officers to identify vendor pools under each of the socio-economic preference programs, including women-owned small business, 8(a), small disadvantaged business, HUBZone (historically underutilized businesses), and service-disabled veteran-owned small business, states SBA.
Get the re-certification regulation, made available by The Federal Register’s Web site.