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Export Promotion: Problems in the Small Business Administration's Programs

GGD-92-77 Published: Sep 02, 1992. Publicly Released: Sep 16, 1992.
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Highlights

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Small Business Administration's (SBA) export promotion programs, focusing on: (1) how the 21 international trade subcenters of the Small Business Development Center Program (SBDC) provide export counseling; (2) the subcenters' coordination of their activities with Department of Commerce export promotion assistance; (3) the financial assistance SBA provided to exporters; and (4) SBA management of its export promotion responsibilities.

Recommendations

Matter for Congressional Consideration

Matter Status Comments
Congress may wish to require SBA to more fully identify which export-related needs of small businesses it can best fulfill and to work with the Trade Promotion Coordinating Committee's small business working group to refocus, if necessary, its export promotion efforts.
Closed – Implemented
P.L. 102-429 of October 1992 created in law an interagency committee to develop a governmentwide plan for export promotion. The law did not require the plan to define what role SBA is to play in export promotion, but it requires that a unified export promotion budget be developed that funds activities according to a set of explicit priorities.
Congress may wish to consider requiring the Secretary of Commerce's governmentwide strategic plan for federal export promotion, or any such national strategic plan, to clearly define what role SBA is to play.
Closed – Implemented
As required by P.L. 102-429, the first governmentwide strategic plan for export promotion was issued in September 1993, and was updated in October 1994. Neither plan fulfilled the act's requirement to establish governmentwide priorities for export promotion and fund programs in a manner consistent with those priorities. However, SBA has taken some steps to better focus its export promotion efforts. For example, SBA is participating with the Commerce Department and other federal agencies in a nationwide network of Export Assistance Centers ("one-stop-shops"). Further, SBA has harmonized its working capital export finance program with a similar program run by the U.S. Export-Import Bank.

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Topics

Agency missionsExport regulationExportingInteragency relationsInternational economic relationsInternational tradeProgram managementRedundancySales promotionSmall business assistance