April 12, 2021—Funds for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) are expected to run out before the May 31 application deadline, CNBC reported.
As of April 5, the Small Business Administration, which oversees the program, has approved nearly four million PPP loans worth about $224 billion, according to the agency. That means about $68 billion is left.
The idea of money running out hadn’t been top of mind, at least in this round of the program, until just before the extension passed. In a March 24 hearing before the Senate Committee on Small Business Entrepreneurship, Patrick Kelley, associate administrator at SBA’s Office of Capital Access, noted that the PPP had about $79 billion left, which would be exhausted by mid-April if applications continued at a similar pace.
“This program actually is not going to, you know, continue on until May 30, as the money’s going to run out,” Erik Asgeirsson, president and CEO of CPA.com, the business and technology arm of the American Institute of CPAs, told CNBC. “I don’t think anybody knew that the money would run out until the SBA made that announcement.”
