The Center for Public Integrity, July 6, 2020: Small Business Loan Data Includes Little About Race
The majority of lenders and borrowers who participated in the $659 billion emergency lending program aimed at supporting small businesses hurt by the spread of the novel coronavirus opted not to disclose the race or ethnicity of the business, according to data released by the U.S. Small Business Administration.
The loan data, released Monday in response to congressional pressure, reveals little about how much of the federal loans went to minority-owned businesses, which were hardest hit by the pandemic. About 86% of the 661,218 loans made for $150,000 or more don’t provide any information about race or ethnicity of the business owner.
The remaining 14% of loans show that more than 83% were to organizations identified as white-owned businesses, according to an analysis by the Center for Public Integrity. Black-owned businesses received less than 2% of the loans, and 6.6% of the loans went to Hispanic-owned businesses, according to the Public Integrity analysis.
