The race is on.
The Small Business Administration (SBA) is set to take applications for the second round of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) as of 10:30 a.m. on Monday (April 27).
President Donald Trump signed the $484 billion COVID-19 rescue bill on Friday (April 24). It includes $310 billion in new money for the latest bailout. The first round of PPP funding ran out of cash within days of being released on April 3.
“The PPP has supported more than 1.66 million small businesses and protected over 30 million jobs for hardworking Americans,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and SBA Administrator Jovita Carranza said in a joint statement. “With the additional funds appropriated by Congress, tens of millions of additional workers will benefit from this critical relief.”
The PPP loan was crafted to keep workers of small businesses on the payroll. The loan will be forgiven if employees are kept on the payroll for eight weeks and if the money is used for payroll, rent, mortgage interest or utilities.
Applications can be made through any SBA 7(a) lender or through any federally insured depository institution, federally insured credit union or participating Farm Credit System. The SBA has said other lenders will be available to make these loans once they are approved.
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For employers unfamiliar with which banks or credit unions are offering the program, the SBA provides a link to search for eligible PPP lenders by zip code.
The U.S. Treasury has also posted an FAQ list with answers to three dozen of the most-asked questions about the program.
The latest bill provides $60 billion for small lenders and will be split between banks with less than $10 billion in assets and those with between $10 billion and $50 billion. It’s an effort to boost the participation of credit unions and who say they were edged out of the first round by big banks.
The PPP program’s restart comes at a time when U.S. businesses are struggling with almost no end in site. Our latest poll of thousands of consumers finds that the average respondent doesn’t expect the crisis to end until October.
