The Office of Minority Business Enterprise Could Do More to Start and Maintain Minority Businesses

Gao ID: CED-77-136 November 10, 1977

The Office of Minority Business Enterprise (OMBE) was established to be the focus of Federal efforts to help establish and expand minority businesses. However, the OMBE management assistance program provided few benefits to the 344 minority and prospective minority businesses sampled. Only 25 percent of the 169 prospective businesses got enough help to start, and about 37 percent of the existing businesses helped were out of business or could not be located.

The Office has emphasized quantity rather than quality assistance, causing such deficiencies as: business plans not being prepared for about two-thirds of the cases, management assistance not being given to about one-third of the cases, and cases receiving assistance getting only portions of the comprehensive program. Contractors generally do not provide assistance according to OMBE criteria and have not followed their clients' progress after initial assistance.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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