PIERRE, SD – Almost 20,000 South Dakota businesses were approved for “Paycheck Protection Program” loans through the Small Business Administration, coordinated in many cases by local banks.
South Dakota Bankers Association President Curt Everson says there are some big numbers. “It’s about 19,000 in loans and over $1.6 billion of lending. If you compare that $1.6 billion, that just by itself is bigger than all but maybe a handful of the banks that operate in South Dakota in their total assets so it’s a big number.”
Everson says there were some problems in accessing the loans. “This whole program came about very quickly in Congress and got handed over to Treasury and SBA and Congress said make it work. And they did,” says Everson. “There were certainly some bumps along the way, some bankers were pretty tired at the end of the day because they were working literally around the clock and the system didn’t always cooperate but they got the job the done.”
Everson says the program will help many businesses survive. “This $650 billion of PPP loan authorizations – none of these loans were to be underwritten. It wasn’t the standard approach to lending as a bank would typically need to do because this is all being back-stopped by money coming from the Treasury,” Everson explains. “It’s a lot of capital to a lot of businesses that really needed it”
Most of the loans will be turned into grants if businesses can hang on to their employees
