MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The second round of the Paycheck Protection program is open for business, while the money lasts.
Regional Administrator for the Small Business Administration, Steve Bulger says after so many businesses were left out in the first round some changes have been made to the program. The changes have slowed the process, but have allowed greater participation.
“We put restrictions on all banks for how many they can apply for at one time to try to keep the process fair,” Bulger said,”It has slowed it down a little bit, but we think that’s the right thing to do.”
The current round of funding is a total of $310 billion, of the total Bulger says $60 billion has been set aside for small lenders.
“We wanted to make sure those small lenders do have access to the funding,” Bulger said,”Because they deal with very small businesses, sometimes in economically disadvantaged communities.”
In the Morgantown area, Chief Operating Officer with Clear Mountain Bank, Clint McCabe tells WAJR News they are working very hard to meet the needs of small business customers.
“Our folks have been very busy working through the second window as best we can to input applications,” McCabe said,”We have folks working around the clock to process these things because there’s a lot of demand, a lot of people need help.”
McCabe says regardless of how many applications the SBA can process they continue to work with their customers.
“Restaurants, beauty salons, service type industries, heating and cooling companies,” McCabe said,”You name it and we’ve seen it, there’s a lot of folks that need help right now.”
At Clear Mountain Bank McCabe says they knew round two would come and they had to be ready to act quickly.
“We were at the forefront of it and when the application portal opened up we were able to successfully process and get funding for hundreds of local businesses and business owners,” McCabe said.