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SBA Economic Injury Disaster Loans

These loans have dried up.

From The Business Journal, see this article below:

Exclusive: SBA's EIDL program exhausts its remaining funds

The Small Business Administration’s $345 billion Economic Injury Disaster Loan Covid-19 relief program has exhausted its remaining funds, SBA Administrator Isabel Guzman confirmed in an exclusive interview with The Playbook on Thursday afternoon.

The popular loan program officially closed to new applications at the end of 2021, but small-business owners who had already received funds were able to request additional amounts. Small-business owners who were already working their way through the reconsideration process could also get approved as long as funds were available.

But that time is over.

“Now, there (are) no more additional requests for funds.” Guzman said. "The funds are depleted.”

Will approved SBA EIDL borrowers receive their funds?

Business owners who have already been approved should receive funds, but the agency won't be taking any more requests, Guzman stressed.

The agency had approved more than 3.9 million EIDL program loans for roughly $378 billion as of April 28, according to SBA data — a total that's higher than the $345 billion program's price tag because some businesses didn't accept all of the money they were approved for.

Guzman said in a recent congressional hearing that the agency was planning on pivoting from dispensing Covid-19 EIDL loans to servicing them. The agency’s budget request for fiscal 2023 includes shifting $320 million in funds initially appropriated for the $10,000 Targeted EIDL Advance cash grant for small-business owners to maintaining and servicing the millions of EIDL loans it has made over the last two years.

The exhaustion of funding for the program marks the end of one of the few remaining Covid-19 relief programs Congress passed in 2020 and 2021, alongside the Paycheck Protection Program, the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant Program and the Restaurant Revitalization Fund.

For businesses who were hoping to tap into the remaining funds, the timing of the funding exhaustion isn't ideal. Inflation has quickly become the top challenge for small-business owners, and it's curbing their growth opportunities.

Will there be more Covid-19 relief funding?

Congress is wrangling over a possible new wave of small business grants, including legislation to replenish the popular but underfunded RRF. The $28.6 billion RRF was created in March 2021, but the Small Business Administration closed it on June 30 once funding was exhausted.

The House already has passed H.R. 3807 or, the Relief for Restaurants and other Hard Hit Small Businesses Act of 2022, which would provide about $42 billion to provide fresh funding for the RRF and an additional $13 billion to create an industry-neutral relief program for small businesses that saw precipitous drops in revenue because of Covid-19.

If the legislation passes both houses, the two chambers would either need to agree on compromise legislation or one chamber would have to pass the other's bill in order to send it to President Biden for his signature. However, a number of obstacles remain before that legislation could become law.
Eric Holdeman is a contributing writer for Emergency Management magazine and is the former director of the King County, Wash., Office of Emergency Management.