America's 28 million small business owners pushing job creation and innovation in our economy. You are responsible for two of the three net new private sector jobs in our communities. Many of these companies start with a tight budget and small staff dedicated people who are looking to transform their industries. These men and women work hard. You sacrifice. And the last thing, for a time, is the bureaucracy, bunch of unnecessary paperwork and navigating Byzantine processes, time, money and resources to waste. You have run companies.
Last week announced to interact with the Government for these companies to make easier management agenda President Obama of a second term. The goal is to ensure that the Government is a reliable partner and a catalyst for these entrepreneurs and chances of success to help. This agenda builds on a successful four-and a half year effort to make Government more efficient, more transparent and more responsible.
At U.S. small business administration (SBA) are we doing this by the harnessing of technology, reduction of bureaucracy and make our programs more rational, and respond. Our goal is to create tools that can beat with that small businesses about their weight.
We have eliminated more than 100 pages of paperwork, some of our loan products and simplified products to address working capital of for small enterprises and better fill in gaps for small dollar loans must be launched. This helped fuel record years for SBA loan in 2011 and 2012.
For example, we have simple application for our small loan advantage program, the main product of 7a for loans under $350,000, which we call SLA 2.0 creates. Because we have seen these changes, a tripling participating lenders and one of more than 280 per cent increase in the number of loans available to set.
We also know high-growth businesses, to get especially those who fight outside traditional startup hubs, often to the investment capital that you need to turn great ideas into viable and successful companies. These companies are crucial to the creation of jobs and innovation in key sectors of our economy.
At the SBA, we run a program called small business investment company (SBIC)-program. This program is entitled to invest up to $3 billion, investing in growth companies annually in funds. In the past, this program was too cumbersome and underutilized. It fixed. We reduced machining times, new SBIC Fund under five- and -a-half to license months from about 15 months in 2009. Indeed, SBIC funds are often the new fast-track process for SBA in less than two months be approved. Today this optimized program as a model of public private partnership and it had its third consecutive record in 2012. Licensed investment funds according to SBICs more than $3 billion in growth capital and over 1,000 small businesses, an increase of 17 percent by FY 2011 and an increase of 83 percent by FY 2010.
We also know that small business owners don't have the time or the resources to all day on the phone or on the computer trying navigate various government programs to spend. Therefore, the Administration has started BusinessUSA, a one-stop-shop for access to business related programs of the Federal Government.
Our aim is to ensure that small businesses have the tools they need to compete globally. Small business owners want to new markets, including overseas export opportunities and to develop important trade and Government supply chains. Many of these companies have not the manpower or the resources for research and go after these opportunities.
We will change that. We recently an inter-agency pilot called US global business solutions. It combines trade finance loans, export, insurance, and marketing support, which previously delivered over a variety of government agencies in a streamlined package products. We have a full scale roll-out of the global business solutions in January 2014 our entire credit portfolio.
We have the American supplier initiative. The objective of this initiative is to help small businesses, which more easily create both the Government and the commercial supply chain opportunities. As part of this effort, we are hosting cooperation exchanges and offers special tools and programs to ensure that small businesses what they need have to successful suppliers.
We also use technology to break down barriers, the small businesses of the winning commercial and Government contracts. For example, we worked with the IBM Foundation on supplier connection, a portal, that makes it easy to connect people with the right procurement in hundreds of major corporations across the country just for a small company. And we started RFP-EZ, an online marketplace, that tightens the Government contracting process, which find it easier for small businesses and provide low dollar contracts from federal agencies. It also lowers the costs for technology services, to save taxpayer money.
RFP-EZ was built by the presidential innovation Fellows entrepreneurs-in-residence at the SBA. These men and women know what entrepreneurs need and the format they need it. And we will want to use these entrepreneurs, and solicit up advising the entrepreneurs continue to streamline and improve the programmes of the Agency, us to help the country including, how we can leverage data, to create supply chain opportunities for small businesses.
The goal of all these efforts, the SBA and the administrative bodies is to ensure that we deliver, as the President said, "the kind of 21st century Government, to which the American people." In this way, we make sure that the American entrepreneurs and small business owners have the tools, resources, and the business environment they need to do what they can do best: innovative new products to create the drive jobs and accelerate economic growth.
Karen Gordon Mills is the administrator of the U.S. small business administration. The SBA helps both main street and high-growth small businesses get access to capital, federal contracts, emergency help and much more.Tags: official SBA news and views, open to trade, SBA news and views 