Over 7.300 New Hampshire businesses have taken PPP2 loans so far

New Hampshire businesses are taking out loans in the second round of the federal Paycheck Protection Program at a steady, but slowly declining, clip, according to the latest report from the U.S. Small Business Administration.

During the last reporting period (Feb. 7-15), the SBA approved 1,273 New Hampshire loans totaling $108 million, bringing the total so far in this round to 7,341 business for $704 million.  During the deliberately slow rollout (January 11-24), Granite State businesses took out $233 million in loans.

The size of the average loan has gone down as well.  The average New Hampshire loan size started at $108,000, but is now at $96,000. That is still above the national average of $75,000, which also is declining.

There is still plenty of money left in the $284 billion program. As of Feb. 15, nearly 1.7 million U.S. businesses have been approved for $125 billion in loans. The program is due to expire at the end of March.

The vast majority of second-round borrowers are going for their second loan, according to another SBA report on the data as of Feb. 11. At that time, less than $10 billion of $115 billion went to first-time borrowers. It’s unclear how much of this were to newly eligible businesses and organizations, like trade associations and chambers of commerce.

Also, as of Feb. 11, more than 5 million businesses nationwide with loans totaling $521 billion have applied for forgiveness under the first round of the PPP and 1.6 million with loans totaling $142.6 billion have been granted it. Businesses were denied forgiveness for $420 million. About 189,000 forgiveness applications for $76 billion are still in progress and about 3.4 million business applications totaling more than $300 billion in PPP loans, have not yet been submitted.