WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration on Monday said it was releasing the names of hundreds of thousands of businesses which took money from a high-profile $660 billion pandemic aid program, letting the public see for the first time how the majority of the cash was spent and whether it helped save jobs.
The U.S. Treasury and Small Business Administration (SBA) said the $521.4 billion in approved loans to employers so far has supported some 51.1 million jobs, or 84% of all small business employees.
The colossal data set on the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), released by the Trump administration after some initial resistance, provides transparency for the first-come-first-served program that has been dogged by technology, paperwork and fairness issues.
To date, the SBA has released broad distribution figures for states, industries and the largest lenders. But the new data should paint a much more detailed picture of which local communities and sub-sectors received support and whether it helped save jobs.
The data could make life uncomfortable for borrowers that broke the spirit or letter of the rules of the program, the aim of which was to help cash-strapped companies keep workers employed, and for lenders that shoveled the money out the door.
The Treasury and SBA said they were releasing data for more than half a million loans of $150,000 or more, including recipient name, address, business type, jobs supported, and some demographic information. That accounts for roughly 73% of the dollars granted, but only 14% of the 4.9 million loans, according to a summary of data the agencies released initially on Monday.
While the data will not say exactly how much money each borrower received, the agencies said they were placing them in a band of varying loan ranges.
Loans were capped at $10 million, although the average loan size was $107,000, the data shows. The Treasury said it was releasing aggregate data on loans below $150,000 but said it would not name the recipients.
The funds reached a wide swath of recipients - more than $67 billion for the healthcare and social assistance sector, $64 billion-plus for construction businesses, $54 billion for manufacturing and, at the smaller end, more than $7 billion for religious organizations, the initial data summary showed.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had initially refused to name any recipients, saying it could expose borrowers’ proprietary business information, particularly if they are sole proprietors and independent contractors. Under pressure from lawmakers, he agreed to shine a light on large borrowers.
Launched in April, the unprecedented program allows small businesses hurt by the pandemic to apply for a forgivable government-backed loan from a lender.
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