The number of Small Business Administration individual loans to Latino-owned businesses has increased by more than 2,200 since 2021, representing an unprecedented dollar value of more than $2.8 million.
Those figures, just released by the SBA, show that in 2017 the agency approved just over 5,600 individual loans, a number that fell to just under 3,900 in the year 2020.
But an active outreach effort on the SBA’s behalf in the past two years has seen the numbers jump from around 5,200 in 2021 to just over 7,300 this year.
In a statement, Isabella Casillas Guzman, SBA Administrator, remarked that “America’s more than five million Latino-owned businesses create jobs, deliver over $800 billion to our economy every year, and add to our nation’s competitiveness.”
The share of Latino-owned business loans, when compared with all SBA loans, has increased as well, jumping from 8.2% in 2017 to 12.2% this year.
Two SBA loan programs have proven particularly useful for Latino businesses: the 7(a) Loan offering, which provides guarantees to lenders supporting financing to small businesses for working capital.
A second initiative, the 504 Loan program, provides long-term, fixed-rate financing of up to $5.5 million for major fixed asset purchases by small businesses.
According to Census Bureau figures, the states with the largest percentage of Latino-owned businesses are all located in the Southwest, with New Mexico, at more than 15%, leading the way.
Texas is a solid second with just under 12% of its businesses being Latino-owned, while the number of Latino-owned businesses in Arizona and Nevada stands at around 6%.
In announcing the increased government loans for Latino-owned businesses, an SBA release also noted that a current small business boom has seen the “fastest creation rate of Hispanic owned businesses in more than a decade–over 20% faster than pre-pandemic levels.”
By Garry Boulard
