Up to the middle of last week, the Small Business Bureau (SBB) said only 10% of applicants for COVID-19 relief had met the criteria to receive financial aid and urged the remainder to submit all the required information in order to speed up the processing of their applications.
When Stabroek News previously spoke with Dr Lowell Porter, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the SBB, he said about 320 local small businesses affiliated with the Bureau applied for financial relief in light of the current slowdown of the country’s economy and the impact on businesses due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
But when contacted again last week, Porter disclosed that only a total of 14 local businesses had fully met the criteria to be granted financial aid. This, he said, amounts to only ten per cent of the 143 local businesses who were on their way to being funded.
He then explained that the remaining 90 per cent must submit all the required information before they could move forward. “Ninety per cent of the applications sent to the Bureau were incomplete. You see people don’t understand that in order to get moving, all the information has to be provided,” Porter said and added that if applicants provided the necessary information early on, there would not be a long wait. “It takes five days to have all the information processed, so if they send it all in at once, we could get started during the five days,” the CEO explained.
The Bureau was granted access to funds specifically allocated to help local small businesses which have been negatively hit by the outbreak of the new coronavirus disease and its concomitant effect on the country’s economy. Porter pointed out that to fit the criteria, persons had to have been a registered client with the Bureau prior to the global pandemic.
Porter disclosed that businesses would be granted no more than $200,000 in funding and every business would not receive the same amount. This, he said, is due to the different circumstances every business faces.
