Small-Business Initiative Gains Momentum, More Money

A project aimed at helping small- and medium-sized businesses to compete globally has attained success, but the federal government says more funds are needed to “sustain the current momentum in creating jobs and increasing revenues, exports, and investments.”

This momentum, it should be noted, is gaining in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

Deloitte Consulting, LLP (formerly Bearing Point) has helped the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to achieve “impressive results” in the first four years of the Jordan initiative, known as the Sustainable Achievement of Business Expansion and Quality, or SABEQ, project.

According to an Action Memorandum to the Assistant Administrator that U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor located via routine database research, those results include the creation of more than 30,000 jobs and while increasing targeted industry revenues by more than a half-billion dollars.

“Additional support is needed to fully capitalize on this momentum to drive forward the impact on Jordan’s economy and, in particular, on growth of its private sector, particularly important as Jordan wrestles with unemployment and rising inflation,” the document says.  

Consequently, George Laudato, the USAID Administrator's Special Assistant for the Middle East, on May 11 approved the request, thereby raising the previously established $69.2 million contract-ceiling by $4 million for the project’s final year.

Other articles about Jordan from U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor:  Federal Government Funds Foreign Education Ministries as Schools Across U.S. Struggle with Budgets

Comments

[Steve Peacock]

See my next post for further enlightenment on why the US would be so generous to Jordan -- Jordan has been making it possible for the US to ship supplies into Iraq. A little positive payback for keeping the machine well-oiled. perhaps? /2011/05/fuel-iraq-ops-planned-through-2014.html

[Steve Peacock]

Suzan: I can only imagine how you and your husband feel about such programs. Just imagine if our government stopped throwing our money around the world like it does and allowed citizens and business-owners to save or reinvest what otherwise would remain in our pockets via lowered taxes. Or, in the alternative, giving tax breaks HERE to deal with "unemployment and rising inflation" HERE!

[Suzan]

My husband is a sole proprietor, and this article just makes me groan. Not that we want any govt agency to help us, but we would really enjoy a tax break. That will never happen.