TEXT C Federal efforts to aid
minority businesses began in the 1960’s when the Small Business Administration
(SBA) began making federally guaranteed loans and government-sponsored
management and technical assistance available to minority business enterprises.
While this program enabled many minority entrepreneurs to form new businesses,
the results were disappointing, since managerial inexperience, unfavorable
locations, and capital shortages led to high failure rates. Even 15 years after
the program was implemented, minority business receipts were not quite two
percent of the national economy’s total receipts. Recently
federal policymakers have adopted an approach intended to accelerate development
of the minority business sector by moving away from directly aiding small
minority enterprises and toward supporting large, growth-oriented minority firms
through intermediary companies. In this approach, large corporations participate
in the development of successful and stable minority businesses by making use of
government-sponsored venture capital. The capital is used by a participating
company to establish a Minority Enterprise Small Businesses that have potential
to become future suppliers of customers of the sponsoring company.
MESBIC’s are the result of the belief that providing established firms
with easier access to relevant management techniques and more job-specific
experience, as well as substantial amounts of capital, gives those firms a
greater opportunity to develop sound business foundations than does simply
making general management experience and small amounts of capital available.
Further, since potential markets for the minority businesses already exist
through the sponsoring companies, the minority businesses face considerably less
risk in terms of location and market fluctuation. Following early financial and
operating problems, sponsoring corporations began to capitalize MESBIC’s far
above the legal minimum of $500,000 in order to generate sufficient income and
to sustain the quality of management needed. MESBIC’s are now emerging as
increasingly important financing sources for minority enterprises.
Ironically, MESBIC staffs, which usually consist of Hispanic and Black
professionals, tend to approach investments in minority firms more pragmatically
than do many MESBIC directors, who are usually senior managers from sponsoring
corporations. The latter often still think mainly in terms of the social
responsibility approach and thus seem to prefer deals that are riskier and less
attractive than normal investment criteria would warrant. Such differences in
viewpoint have produced uneasiness among many minority staff members, who feel
that minority entrepreneurs and businesses should be judged by established
business considerations. These staff members believe their point of view is
closer to the original philosophy of MESBIC’s and they are concerned that,
unless a more prudent course if followed, MESBIC directors may revert to
policies likely to re-create the disappointing results of the original SBA
approach. Which of the following statements about the SBA program can be inferred from the passage
A.The maximum term for loans made to recipient businesses was 15 years. B.Business loans were considered to be more useful to recipient businesses than was management and technical assistance. C.The anticipated failure rate for recipient businesses was significantly lower than the rate that actually resulted. D.Recipient businesses were encouraged to relocate to areas more favorable for business development.