Javier Bustamante,
Editor

Politics

The Minority Business RoundTable

MBRT met at the magnificent St. Regis Hotel in Washington for a luncheon prior to a White House briefing entitled "Partners for America". This was a brilliant get together of the best and brightest minority businesses in America.

The nation’s minorities account for 27 percent of today’s population and 90 percent of projected population growth over the next 50 years. Currently, they own only 14.6 percent of the nation’s businesses, but new, minority-owned firms have been growing at more than six times the rate of all firms in the U.S. and are growing at nearly twice the rate of all firms in annual sales, according to U.S. Census data. There are more than three million minority-owned firms with aggregate sales of nearly $600 billion.

Popular perception holds that all minority-owned businesses are "small" businesses. The existence of the MBRT dispels this myth. MBRT firms, which operate in a wide range of industries, post sales from $53 million to more than $2 billion per company. Each of these firms employ between 80 and 4,000 people.