NEW YORK (Reuters) – A lobbying group for U.S. banks called on the U.S. government on Monday to amend glitches in a key federal pandemic loan program that it said were preventing small businesses from getting the financial aid they needed.
The letter from the American Bankers Association to the Department of Treasury and the Small Business Administration (SBA) came as the U.S. government pressured large lenders earlier this month to go live with the latest round of the loan program despite many unresolved issues.
The lobbying group said the loan program, also known as the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), was preventing companies from applying for another loan from the government in the latest round of the scheme, if they had received one last year that was pending forgiveness.
Under the PPP, companies receive loans from banks that will be repaid by the government if the money is spent on eligible expenses. Banks lent $525 billion worth of PPP loans last year, and the government is in the midst of deciding whether the loans will be forgiven so that borrowers need not repay them.
The PPP was further expanded this year and re-launched this month when Congress gave it another $284 billion to help businesses weather the COVID-19 pandemic.
“This technical error is leading SBA not to approve a significant number of … loans,” the letter said.
The Small Business Administration, the primary overseer of the PPP, did not respond to a request for comment.
Lenders are also receiving a “high number of incorrect error messages” when they to submit loan applications on behalf of borrowers, and attempts to get clarification from the government have been “met with silence”, the lobbying group said.
The letter also said banks had worked earlier with companies to compile documents needed for applications, but the latest requirements appeared to have changed last week. This meant companies may have to spend “countless” hours re-doing applications unless the government clarifies otherwise, the lobbying group said.
(Reporting by Koh Gui Qing and Michelle Price; editing by Richard Pullin)
