“I do think opportunity will increase,” he said.

Krachman noted that three more federal agencies rolled out mentor-protégé programs this year. These programs “are very positive for small businesses,” he said, because they allow them to team with large businesses on contracts that small businesses couldn’t handle by themselves. Major contractors at these agencies will be looking for small-business partners as a result of these programs.

“I expect a lot of Las Vegas weddings to be going on,” Krachman said.

Contract Data Questioned

Joint ventures formed through mentor-protégé programs may be one reason why contracts to large businesses sometimes are listed as small-business contracts in the government’s database, Jordan said. Procurement officers also sometimes miscode contracts.

Last year, the SBA estimated that as much as $5 billion in awards that were counted as small-business contracts in fiscal 2007 may have actually gone to large businesses.

This year, Jordan said, the SBA went through all the data and flagged small-business contracts that looked suspicious, so that agencies could review them and then correct them if they were miscoded.

“I think this data is more accurate than it’s ever been,” Jordan said.

Espinosa isn’t convinced, however. Earlier this year, his organization analyzed the government’s contracting data and found that 47 large companies had received contracts designated for small businesses.

“Don’t tell me this is miscoding,” Espinosa said. “It’s not miscoding.”

He thinks some large businesses misrepresent themselves as small for the purposes of winning contracts, an allegation also made by the Petaluma, California-based American Small Business League.

In some cases, procurement officials may count a large-business contract as a small-business contract as a way to inflate their small business numbers, he said.