US President Joe Biden announced on Monday that small businesses facing distress in the United States will receive federal support starting Wednesday.
According to Biden, many small businesses in the country – in the early days of the pandemic – did not have access to adequate resources because the larger companies received the most money. The president put it this way: the changes, which will take effect within two days, will provide long-awaited help for small businesses that have been “destroyed” by the economic downturn caused by the epidemic.
The essence of the so-called public-private partnership program is that the federal government helps companies facing difficulties due to the coronavirus epidemic through favorable loans so that they do not have to lay off their workers.
If they can retain their employees for the long term and spend at least 60 percent of the amount on wages, the loan taken may become non-repayable.
The Cabinet has set a two-week period from Wednesday when only companies with fewer than 20 employees can apply for support. The government also allocates $ 1 billion to help individual owners such as beauticians, most of whom are women and skinned people.
This is the third PPP program. The first program, which began on April 3, 2020 and ended on August 8, 2020, disbursed 5.2 million loans with a total value of $ 525 billion. This, as a previous analysis showed, helped many companies to remain afloat at a time when the government’s restrictive measures against the Coronavirus have forced many companies to close or operate at reduced capacity, MTI writes.
Under the most recent program, which began on January 11, the government has so far disbursed $ 133.5 billion in loans. This is less than half of the $ 284 billion approved by Congress. According to the data, an average of $ 74,000 was spent per company.
According to official information, non-citizens legally residing in the United States can also apply for the third program, which begins Wednesday.
