Arkansas Leads Nation in Deploying Small Business Funds

The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s State Small Business Credit Initiative (SSBCI) on Thursday released a new quarterly report showing the program has now disbursed more than $1 billion to state economic development agencies to support small business lending and investment.

The new report also found Arkansas had deployed $10.9 million, representing 83 percent of its SSBCI allocation by the end of 2013. Arkansas also recycled more than $25,000 of its program funds back into new SSBCI loans or investments.

The report supports a proposal in President Obama’s FY 2015 budget released this week to extend the program with an additional $1.5 billion in funding. A second round of funding would capitalize on new working relationships between states and small business lenders and investors, and strengthen the federal government’s support of state economic development agencies that are highly responsive to capital needs in local markets.

Thursday’s report also showed significant progress on the part of all state programs. The total funds expended, obligated, transferred or recycled by state programs reached $750 million, or 51 percent of the nearly $1.5 billion of total allocated funds, by the end of last quarter.

SSBCI was created when President Obama signed into law the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010 in September 2010. Through SSBCI, the U.S. Department of the Treasury awarded almost $1.5 billion to fund programs that support small businesses and small manufacturers.

The program is expected to help spur up to $15 billion in new private sector lending or investment in small companies by leveraging $10 in private capital for every dollar of federal support by the program’s end.