More than 11,000 New Hampshire small businesses received approval for Paycheck Protection Program loans before funds ran out on April 16.
Nationwide more than 1.6 million small businesses were approved for loans through 12 p.m. on Thursday. The program opened on April 3, a week after it was established through the CARES Act. Lenders reported receiving an overwhelming number of applications for the program, which was supposed to last through June 30. Funds were depleted Thursday morning, and the U.S. Small Business Administration suspended the program.
The 11,582 PPP loans received by New Hampshire small businesses totaled about $2 billion.
The program was created to help small businesses keep employees on their payroll, but based on 2019 data, the PPP loan approvals represent less than 10 percent of New Hampshire small businesses. According to the SBA’s 2019 state profile, New Hampshire had more than 134,000 small businesses in 2019, and more than 295,000 employees at these businesses in 2019 made up about 50 percent of the state’s workforce.
The average loan size nationally was $206,000, and 74 percent of the loans were for $150,000 or less.
Almost 5,000 lenders nationwide participated in the program. SBA Administrator Jovita Carranza and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a joint statement that the program included significant lending by community banks and credit unions.
“Nearly 20 percent of the amount approved was processed by lenders with less than $1 billion in assets, and approximately 60 percent of the loans were approved by banks with $10 billion of assets or less,” Carranza and Mnuchin said in the statement. “No lender accounted for more than 5 percent of the total dollar amount of the program.”
Lawmakers have reached a stalemate over additional funding for the program. Carranza and Mnuchin in their statement urged Congress to provide additional funding.
Funding has also lapsed for another SBA program intended to help small businesses experiencing financial difficulties related to the coronavirus. The SBA has announced that it is no longer accepting Economic Injury Disaster Loan applications
