SBA Administrator Maria Contreras-Sweet on the President's FY 2017 Budget

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Feb 09, 2016, 04:58 ET

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WASHINGTON, Feb. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- President Obama today presented his Fiscal Year 2017 Budget to Congress.

Administrator Maria Contreras-Sweet said: "Two out of three net new jobs in America are created by our small businesses. Millions of middle class families work for small businesses that rely on SBA's ability to facilitate access to capital, high-quality counseling, federal contracting opportunities and disaster assistance. I'm proud that in Fiscal Year 2015 SBA has achieved historic lending and contracting levels for small enterprises. The President's budget will allow SBA to continue delivering world-class services to our nation's innovative entrepreneurs and small business owners by investing in more modern technology and streamlined processes, while creating a more inclusive SBA that is more accessible to entrepreneurs at every stage of the small business life cycle."

Funding Highlights:

The President's FY 2017 Budget provides $719 million in discretionary funding and $159 million related to major disasters as a discretionary cap adjustment for the Small Business Administration to provide capital, counseling, disaster assistance and contracting opportunities to America's entrepreneurs. This includes:

Supporting more than $46 billion in loan guarantees to help more than 65,000 small businesses secure the financing necessary to start or expand their businesses;
Increasing microloans and small-dollar lending to creditworthy borrowers seeking to start new enterprises;
Promoting inclusive entrepreneurship through targeted initiatives to ensure equal access to SBA services for entrepreneurs of every race, gender, and region;
Helping small businesses tap global markets through awards to states and territories to fund international small business market development activities;
Offering unique training opportunities for transitioning service members and current veterans to pursue business ownership;
Expanding entrepreneurial education programs that ensure business owners can effectively deploy capital to grow their businesses and create good job:
Providing over $1 billion in disaster relief lending to business owners, homeowners and renters in the wake of declared disasters;
Facilitating access to over $90 billion in federal contracting, and;
Proposing a new loan guarantee program to assist in financing the scale-up of innovative new manufacturing technologies to commercial-scale production through a combination of Federal loan guarantees and matching private funds totaling $10 billion over five years.

The Budget offsets some of these programs with a cancellation of $55 million in prior year unobligated balances of business loans subsidy that are no longer actively used, since the 504 loan guarantee program became zero subsidy in 2016. This will not impact the new SBA appropriation or any programmatic activities in 2017.

For a fact sheet on SBA's FY 2017 budget input please visit www.sba.gov/budget.

Release Number: 16-09

Contact: Terry Sutherland (202) 205-6919
Internet Address: www.sba.gov/news
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SOURCE U.S. Small Business Administration