The $350 million emergency federal program to help small businesses reeling from the nationwide COVID-19 shutdown has been spent, and Delaware’s share was the smallest of the 50 states.
Delaware, with a population of 974,000, had a total of 1,974 approved SBA paycheck protection program loans through Monday, according to the SBA data, and the aggregate value was also the lowest of all 50 states.
In contrast, Hawaii, with a population of just 1,400,000 received 8,426 loans — four and a half times the number Delaware received.
Delaware Business Now first reported that Delaware’s $590 million in loans received from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) lagged other small states like Wyoming with a smaller population.
It is unclear if Delaware’s share of the program is smaller than all other states because applications were less or for other reasons.
Congress has wrangled over how to replenish the fund, while the US Small Business Administration (SBA) said Thursday the program would not be accepting additional applications. SBA approved more than 1.6 million PPP loan applications totaling more than $339 billion from over 4,900 lending institutions.
However, most of those borrowers in Delaware and elsewhere are still waiting for those loans to be funded and money to appear in their accounts.
The Paycheck Protection Program was designed to incentivize small businesses to keep their employees on the payroll but providing loans to cover eight weeks of payroll. The SBA will forgive portions of the loan used also to pay rent, utilities, and mortgage interest.
