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State of Mississippi joins Gulf Coast Revitalization Project initiated by IBS Group

SB Informer
Tuesday, August 29, 2006; 03:47 AM

BSG International, Inc., (the "Company"), is proud to announce that its subsidiary IBS Group, Inc., (IBSG) reports that the State of Mississippi is joining the Gulf Coast Revitalization Project initiated by IBSG in consideration of those states heavily impacted by last year's hurricanes, and with the approval of the US Small Business Administration's Disaster Recovery team. IBS Group will continue to waive first year license fees, valued at $100,000 for Mississippi, as they did with Alabama, as their contribution to the Gulf Coast recovery effort.

Mississippi joins the State of Alabama which together expect to provide BizWorldPro services to a conservative percentage of the estimated more than 200,000 small-to-midsize enterprises in those states according to Mississippi and Alabama state statistics. Although no assurances can be given, management anticipates that the State of Mississippi SBDC organization alone is expected to generate $5.9 million in revenues to be shared between the Mississippi SBDC and IBSG over the life of the five-year agreement, with approximately $600,000 realized in revenues during the first 12 months of operation.

Hurricane Katrina has caused widespread devastation to the Gulf Coast states, displacing tens of thousands of small- and mid-sized businesses and over 100,000 employees. Those state's Small Business Development Centers participating under the Project will utilize IBS Group's digital enterprise service center platform as the key tool to revitalize their small and mid-sized business communities.

"Even before last year's hurricane damage, we were on a strategy to develop Mississippi's small business community into a stronger economic position within the country," said Doug Gurley, State Director of Mississippi's SBDC network, "and although Katrina has caused us tremendous delays in implementing our strategy, we believe that a BizWorldPro network will help us make up for those delays and in fact let us achieve our goals even sooner than previously expected."

"We are expecting that businesses damaged or displaced by Katrina will be incented to return to full operation through the use of the powerful services provided by BizWorldPro," said William Campbell Jr., State Director of Alabama's SBDC network, "and in fact we hope that it will also encourage other businesses to come to our state to share in the revitalized economic development opportunities." Mr. Campbell added, "We well appreciate IBSG's contribution in helping us rebuild our small business community. It gives us further assurance that we will rise above the damage and create a solid ground for the thousands of small businesses looking to thrive in our state."

Alan M. Shafer, Chief Operating Officer of IBSG, stated that, "The addition of the State of Mississippi SBDC network to our Gulf Coast Revitalization Project is very encouraging to us not only for the good we know can be accomplished to strengthen Mississippi's business economy, but it also is a vote of confidence for the BizWorldPro system itself. We will be working very closely with Doug Gurley and his team to get their small business network operational as soon as possible so they can expand their good work in positively impacting Mississippi's business community and the jobs so necessary to their recovery."

Dr. Michael Rivers, CEO of IBSG International, said, "Mississippi is the latest political entity to see the value of our technology in aiding the development of its small-to-midsize enterprises. The scalability and flexibility of BizWorldPro is demonstrated by its adoption in various parts of the world as well as by our financial results. Our sales revenues in the latest quarter reported were up 223% over the same quarter the year before, operating profit rose six fold to $1.6 million, and the quarter ended June 30, 2006 was our eighth consecutive profitable quarter. Although no assurances can be given, our trajectory suggests that the second half of the year will exceed the first half results."