Starting April 6, they’ll be able to apply for up to 24 months of business relief with a max loan amount of $500,000.
Before this, the limit was six months and a maximum loan amount of $150,000.
“More than 3.7 million businesses employing more than 20 million people have found financial relief through SBA’s Economic Injury Disaster Loans, which provide low-interest emergency working capital to help save their businesses,” SBA Administrator Isabella Casillas Guzman said in a statement, according to CNBC. “However, the pandemic has lasted longer than expected, and they need larger loans.”
There’s also some positive news available for those who have already applied or received loans via the SBA — according to CNBC, they might now be eligible for an increase based on the new amounts announced.
Also, businesses that previously received loans will now be able to be considered under the new guidelines without taking any additional actions, with the agency saying it will be reaching out to those people through email later on, closer to the April deadline.
Advertisement: Scroll to Continue
Those applicants which have already accepted a loan calculated under the previous guidelines will now have up to two years after the initial funding to ask for more, according to the guidance.
Despite the attempts of the SBA to smoothly roll out the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) to help businesses, there have been glitches and bumps along the way. The program was renewed this year after Congress got its stimulus package out in December.
Since then, there have been numerous reports of less-than-helpful exchanges. One customer said their experience was “a nightmare” of waiting on the phone for three hours. And thousands of people were turned down accidentally because they were reported falsely as having a criminal conviction.
