The Small Business Administration\u2019s staff held one-on-one conferences with Saipan\u2019s business leaders Thursday to help them prepare for the windfall of government contracts and business opportunities many anticipate from the pending military build up on Guam.<\/p>\n
SBA is the federal agency tasked with fostering the growth of small businesses. Held at the Aqua Resort Club, the conferences followed a presentation by SBA staff on how businesses can work with the federal government.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a process that can get a business owner lost,\u201d said Commerce Secretary Michael Ada. \u201cI would urge everybody in the business community not to wait. It\u2019s an effort and they should start working now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Guam is now preparing for the arrival of an estimated 8,000 U.S. armed forces personnel and their 9,000 family members, who are slated for relocation from Okinawa, Japan, to the island. Military officials have said the move could necessitate scores of major construction projects and other support that would require local contractors. <\/p>\n
Yet working with the federal government, as shown in the presentation, can prove a daunting and complicated task for the uninitiated, involving a maze of contract stipulations and a significant time commitment. <\/p>\n
\u201cSeek all the resources you can get to learn about federal contracts,\u201d said Kenneth Lujan, branch manager for SBA. \u201cDon\u2019t sell yourself short with data. We\u2019ll provide people with links to these federal programs but it\u2019s really up to them to take advantage of it. Contracting with the government, it\u2019s a different playing field than on Saipan and we want to elevate the level of expertise.\u201d[B][I] (Stefan Sebastian) [\/I][\/B]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Small Business Administration\u2019s staff held one-on-one conferences with Saipan\u2019s business leaders Thursday to help them prepare for the windfall of government contracts and business opportunities many anticipate from the pending military build up on Guam.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-126583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126583\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}