USHCC: An Urgent Call to Action for Latino and Latina Owned Businesses
story by: Ramiro Cavazos
The number of Latino business owners in the United States continues to grow significantly faster than the United States average. Over the past ten years, the number of Latino business owners grew 34%, compared to 1% for all other business owners in the United States.
America’s 60 million Latinos were generating $2.3 Trillion annually in economic impact to our G.D.P. before the COVID-19 (Novel Coronavirus) crisis began. There are 4.8 million Hispanic-owned business in America. Many of these companies are young, small and fragile. With the proper equitable support, they will fuel the future economic growth of America. Without proper intervention, the Coronavirus could decimate a large segment of these companies, along with many other non-Latino owned businesses.
The United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and Latino Leaders Magazine are proud to partner together in solidarity to actively promote the economic growth, development and interests of these more than 4.8 million Hispanic-owned businesses that aggregately contribute over $800 billion to the American economy every year.
Together, we are here to support, re-engage, and revitalize America’s Hispanic- Owned Businesses that represent America’s future economic engine through their innovation, dynamism and patriotism.
The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) which was launched on April 3, 2020, ran out of funds within 13 days by April 16, 2020 due to the strong need. A total of $342,277,999,103.00 was dispersed to 1,661,367 companies. However, 2% of the firms approved for loans accounted for almost 30% of the total funding. That’s $104.7 Billion dollars for 33,200 businesses or an average of $3.15 million each. Yet, 74.03% of the total PPP loans approved went to businesses that borrowed $150,000 or less, which was only 17.04% of the total PPP funding which went to loan applicants from the same pool of small business applicants.
On April 24, 2020, a second round of funding expansion was passed to add more funds to the PPP. We will continue to advocate for more funds for the PPP and for the Small Business Administration to be administered through Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) and to be earmarked specifically for minority-owned small businesses. We strong recommend allocating additional funding for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL) and grants, closing the existing gaps of inequity in accessing relief, and increasing transparency which will help enable a stronger and faster recovery for our country.
Our strategic focus this year is to implement new, innovative digital technology that will allow us to continue to deliver timely and critical resources to our network of small and minority-owned businesses across the country without the need to convene physically in response to the COVID-19 economic fallout. This includes leveraging webinars, podcasts, regional meetings, virtual workshops, phone calls, among other programs.
We are leading the way in creating and supporting innovative resources for your customers and for our base of small business owners. We look forward to continuing to work together to build successful resources for our Latina and Latino entrepreneurs.
We are also opening this as an important call to action for new partners and supporters. Join the USHCC and Latino Leaders Magazine in this initiative. Help us provide immediate help to support and expand resources for our nation’s Hispanic and minority-owned small businesses during this national crisis.+