Loan processing averaged 18 days or less. For example, after Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria in 2017, SBA accepted 340,000 disaster loan applications and approved 141,000-making over $7 billion in loans to help business owners, homeowners, renters, and nonprofits recover.

SBA’s Disaster Loan Program helps small businesses rebuild or replace damaged property or continue business operations during disasters.

There are a number of additional opportunities (as well as priority recommendations) to improve how the SBA implements and oversees other SBA programs. For example: For both PPP and the EIDL program, SBA has not conducted formal fraud risk assessments and lacks a comprehensive oversight plan to identity and respond to risks to these programs, exposing them to the risks of fraud and potential provision of funds to ineligible applicants.Īpproval Rate for Economic Injury Disaster Loans by County, March 2020-Feburary 2021.

However, SBA has not communicated important information about the program, such as expected processing times, to potential and actual program participants in an effectively or timely manner. SBA continues to provide these loans and grants. For eligible applicants to the EIDL program, SBA has also provided millions of grants totaling about $22.9 billion.

As of July 2021, SBA has provided 3.8 million Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL) totaling $214.4 billion.

While SBA is reviewing loan eligibility and requests from lenders to forgive these loans, SBA has not documented certain loan review steps or developed a process to improve communication with lenders. SBA guaranteed these loans to reduce risk to lenders.

Through banks and other lenders, SBA’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) provided about 11.8 million forgivable loans totaling $800 billion to small businesses.

These funds greatly aided many small businesses, but SBA could improve oversight and implementation of these programs. SBA has provided hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of loans and grants to help small businesses recover from adverse economic impacts created by COVID-19. In addition, to support small businesses affected by COVID-19, Congress appropriated about $100 billion in grants, $50 billion in loan subsidies, and provided about $800 billion in commitment authority. The Small Business Administration (SBA) oversees programs that provide small businesses and entrepreneurs with counseling and training, access to capital and federal contracts, and disaster assistance. Small businesses are an important driver of the nation’s economic growth.

Small business administration