Federal contract cash flow to small businesses slows.

But Western Pennsylvania bucks national trend

In the competition for federal contract dollars, small businesses in Western Pennsylvania fared better last year than their counterparts nationwide.

For the first time in recent years, the small business share of federal prime contracting fell in fiscal 1998, with many small firms receiving word from federal procurement centers that contracts were too big for them to handle or simply not available.

Total small business contracting in Pennsylvania as a whole dropped by more than $111 million from 1997 to 1998. But in Western Pennsylvania, federal procurement centers largely bucked this trend.

The 10 centers here doled out $125.8 million in contracts to small businesses in 1998, up from $98.4 …