Recommendations for increasing the availability of capital

Abstract

Mark Twain's proverbial statement about the weather--- Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it---might be equally applicable to small businesses. Everyone seems to be talking about small businesses these days, but is there really enough that is being done to help them? There are, to be sure, a number of organizations that work on their behalf such as the Small Business Administration in the government sector and venture capital firms in the private sector. There has also been, in recent years, a rapid increase in the number of small business investment companies (SBIC's) as well as minority enterprise small business investment companies (MESBIC's) both federally licensed under the Small Business Investment Act of 1958. More encouraging than the increase in the number of these organizations is the increase in investment funds that they have made available to small businesses: $33 million for MESBIC's and $255 million for SBIC's as of March 31, 1979.