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April 7, 2020

More than 1,200 CT small biz approved for federal stimulus funding so far

HBJ Photo | Joe Cooper Downtown Hartford has gone quiet during the COVID-19 pandemic. Pictured: Asylum Street in Hartford.
By Sean Teehan

More than 1,200 small business loan applications through the federal government’s stimulus program have been approved for Connecticut companies, despite some technical glitches with the system, officials said.

The Small Business Administration's Connecticut district office reported Monday that just under 1,300 loans totaling about $640 million were approved through the new Paycheck Protection Program. Connecticut SBA spokeswoman Moraima Gutierrez said national SBA officials instructed her not to release new numbers Tuesday, but noted that applications appear to be ticking upward.

"[Applications] are definitely growing," Gutierrez said. "We're just trying to work as quickly and efficiently as we can despite the glitches that we've had."

SBA's E-TRAN system, an eportal lenders use to process applications, has been experiencing technical difficulties since federal officials rolled out the Paycheck Protection Program last Friday. 

Gutierrez and the seven other employees at the Connecticut SBA office have each been fielding at least 100 calls on the disaster services line (1-800-659-2955) from 7 a.m. until the office closes at 9 p.m., she said.

However, Gutierrez thinks Connecticut businesses are relatively well-positioned to receive loans, because the state was the third in the nation to be declared a federal disaster area, a prerequisite for federal assistance.

In less than a week, the SBA, which handled just $28 billion in loans in 2019, stood up a platform to try and begin disbursing nearly $350 billion through an entirely new program Friday.

But concerns about lender liability, glitches with the interface banks used to upload loan information and delayed participation by major banks all culminated into a rocky first few hours.

The issues surrounding the rollout of the small business loan program are an early sign that efforts to quickly dole out funds from the massive $2 trillion stimulus are going to be rocky, including disbursement of direct payments to individuals and states having to disburse a record number of unemployment insurance claims.

Congressional leaders and aides acknowledged that getting the money out the door so rapidly was never going to be easy.

The tensions in the small business program stem from the need to get the funding out quickly to businesses no longer collecting revenue due to coronavirus shutdowns, while ensuring the money goes out where it's intended.

"There are bound to be problems," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told McClatchy this week. "You can't pass a bill of this magnitude in a week and have a perfect implementation of $2.2 trillion, so sure there are going to be glitches."

A CNN report was used in this story

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