\u201cWe created the program, believing that about 5,000 applications would be processed. And it\u2019s a much smaller volume than that,\u201d said New Mexico Finance Authority CEO Marquita Russel at a presentation to state legislators Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Low participation has saved the agency money on contractors, Russel said.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s also a sign that the legislation isn\u2019t reaching many small businesses. Fewer than 900 businesses have applied for loans under the program, which range from $500 to $75,000.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s despite ongoing pain in the New Mexico economy where the 11.3% August unemployment rate was far higher than the national average of 8.4%, and businesses face occupancy limits ranging from 75% for hotels to 25% for restaurants.<\/p>\n
Hundreds of applications have been rejected.<\/p>\n
About 85% of those businesses that didn\u2019t qualify for the Small Business Recovery Loan Fund failed to meet the requirement of showing a loss of at least 30% of revenue in April and May compared with the same period in 2019.<\/p>\n
That included for-profit companies that already had \u201cbusiness in the hopper,\u201d Russel said, even if they\u2019re going broke now.<\/p>\n
It also includes nonprofits that raise the bulk of their money during other times of the year, and there\u2019s no flexibility in the program for businesses that are less than a year old and therefore can\u2019t compare revenues.<\/p>\n
The fund gives two months\u2019 worth of operating expenses to eligible entities owned by residents at an interest rate of about 2%, with no payments required in the first year.<\/p>\n
Investment and Pension Oversight Committee Chairman Sen. George Mu\u00f1oz asked for suggestions in the coming weeks on how to tweak the program to increase the distribution of the loans.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause who knows what the economy is going to be like \u2013 if we\u2019re going to see another surge in November,\u201d said Mu\u00f1oz, a Democrat representing Gallup.<\/p>\n
Russel suggested creating more flexibility for the requirements. She added that 8% of applications were rejected for not meeting resident ownership requirements, particularly counties bordering Texas, Colorado and Arizona.<\/p>\n
The loan program is set to end in December, even if the money hasn\u2019t been used.<\/p>\n
Attanasio is a corps member for the Associated Press\/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cWe created the program, believing that about 5,000 applications would be processed. And it\u2019s a much smaller volume than that,\u201d said New Mexico Finance Authority CEO Marquita Russel at a presentation to state legislators Tuesday. Low participation has saved the agency money on contractors, Russel said. But it\u2019s also a sign that the legislation isn\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[815,685,138],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-51093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-associated-press-new-mexico","tag-coronavirus-covid-19","tag-new-mexico"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51093\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51093"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=51093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}