Mayor Raises Goal for City M/WBE Contract Awards by $4B
Beginning this summer, M/WBEs and small businesses will be able to access loans totaling up to $1 million per year at a 3% interest rate.
NEW YORK CITY—After registering $1.8 billion more in M/WBE contract awards than he originally projected, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has set a new lofty seven-year target.
The mayor announced on Wednesday that the city is two years ahead of schedule in terms of meeting his OneNYC goal of awarding $16 billion to minority and women-owned businesses by the end of fiscal year 2025. Based on the fact that the city has already awarded approximately $7.8 billion in M/WBE contracts since the initiative was established in 2015, the mayor is now increasing the OneNYC goal by $4 billion to a $20 billion target by the end of FY 2025.
The mayor also has increased the loan cap on the city’s Contract Financing Loan Fund, a program that allows M/WBEs and small businesses to access affordable loans. Currently, M/WBEs and small businesses have access to loans totaling $500,000. Beginning this summer, M/WBEs and small businesses will be able to access loans totaling up to $1 million per year at a 3% interest rate.
Since the launch of the Contract Financing Loan Fund in March 2017, the city has loaned more than $6 million to more than 30 businesses, which allowed these businesses to perform on more than $37 million worth of work. Approximately 90% of these businesses that secured the CFLF funding are city-certified M/WBEs.
“I have said this before, and I’ll say it again: this city works best when all New Yorkers—regardless of race, gender or ethnicity—have the resources they need to contribute in our economy,” Mayor de Blasio says. “We are reaching historic highs when it comes to awarding contracts to M/WBEs, and with our new OneNYC goal, we are reminding all available M/WBEs interested in doing business with the city that we are in fact open for business.”
The city also released other MWBE-related data including that at the end of the second quarter of FY 2018, the city reached a 20% utilization of M/WBEs, meaning that M/WBEs were awarded 20% of the value of city contracts from July 1 2017 to December 31, 2017. The city currently has a goal to award 30% of the value of city contracts to M/WBEs by the end of FY 2021.
The mayor has a stated goal of certifying 9,000 M/WBEs by end of FY 2019 in New York City. Currently, the city has nearly 6,000 certified M/WBEs in its program, a roughly 50% increase since the beginning of the de Blasio administration.