Selling overseas is the best way for minority businesses in the U.S. to achieve rapid growth, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said in a speech Friday at the National Minority Enterprise Development Conference in Washington.

"There is whole lot of untapped potential out there," Mr. Locke said, pointing out that 95 percent of the world's consumers live outside the U.S.

Yet less than 1 percent of the 30 million U.S. companies export, lower than all other developed countries, said Mr. Locke. He added that 58 percent of U.S. companies that do export, sell to only one other country.

"Imagine if we could just get the company that's selling products to Canada to grow into Mexico or the company providing services in France to move into neighboring Spain," he added.   

The Obama administration wants to double U.S. exports over the next five years.

Minority businesses already export twice as much as the average business because of existing cultural or business ties to other countries, said the commerce secretary.

"We want to build on that," he said. "The Obama administration wants to empower minority businesses because it is self evidently a good thing for your employees, for your communities and for the entire American economy when you succeed."

Under the administration's export initiative, there will be more credit available for exporters, greater government efforts to locate buyers of U.S. goods and services abroad and a push to remove trade barriers in overseas markets, said Mr. Locke.

The administration also has a $7 billion program to expand high-speed Internet access to under-served parts of the country.

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