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Economic Power and Problems
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15057 |
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Section : |
SPECIAL SECTION
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| Issue
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9 / 1988 |
3,482 Words |
| Author
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Jeff Sellers
Jeff M. Sellers is former senior editor of Hispanic Business
magazine |
In the world of business, U.S. Hispanics are like a sleeping giant stirring awake. The economic potential is mighty for a Hispanic market that is growing five times faster than the general population and for a Hispanic business sector that has proliferated. Herculean efforts are under way to get the giant onto its feet.
But opposition is heavy and steady. Discrimination, alleged by Hispanic suppliers who compete for contracts from mainstream corporations, persists. And in public-sector markets, the amount of federal contracts going to Hispanic-owned firms has stagnated under an administration wary of the concept of minority procurement. Hispanics, already vying with the entrenched black community for minority opportunities, are facing new competition from Asian and Filipino immigrants. On top of all this, the Hispanic community is often fragmented. Many Hispanic businessmen shun being categorized as a minority so as not to receive "special treatment."
Still, the giant stretches. The government has been trying to track his every move since 1977, when it included Hispanics in its minority business survey, carried out every five years. The ensuing 1982 survey, not compiled and released until 1986, found that the number of Hispanic-owned companies had grown by 13.1 percent from 1977, to 248,141, while their sales leapt 44.2 percent-from $10.4 billion to $15 billion.
"The level of sales has gone up in the past 5 to 10 years, as has the size of the companies," says Anson Anderson, vice president of the Washington, D.C.-based Latin American Manufacturers Association. "We have 600 members, 250 of which are dues-paying members, and the average size of our companies is about $750,000 in annual sales."
Most Hispanic companies are smaller than the Latino-owned manufacturing firms, whose $1.6 billion in revenues generated more than 10 percent of Hispanic revenues in 1982, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, which conducts the surveys. The average Hispanic-owned firm, according to the Census Bureau's 1982 survey, generated $60,484 in yearly gross revenues, compared with the $77,143 in sales for the average U.S. small business. Hispanic-owned firms with gross receipts of $1 million or more accounted for just 0.6 percent of the total Hispanic firms, although the bureau admits that its estimate of 636 large Hispanic-owned corporations is too low.
The large Hispanic corporations make the overall revenue picture a bit top-heavy. Those with sales
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