Stock photo: Pixabay
Sophie Gray
Local Journalism Initiative
The regional division of Community Futures for the Okanagan and Similkameen area is opening applications for a new federally funded emergency loan program for businesses affected by COVID-19.
The loans are part of the regional relief and recovery funds program, which “provides financial contributions to help support fixed operating costs of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), where business revenues have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic,” according to the Government of Canada website.
There will be two levels of interest-free loans available, broken into categories of over $40,000 and under $40,000. The smaller loans will be distributed to SMEs through the Community Futures organization in regional areas like the Okanagan and Similkameen.
“Over the past eight weeks, we have heard daily from businesses in the community about the difficult situations many of them are in. We are glad to be able to bring relief to some of those businesses through delivering a portion of the federal government’s financial aid for small business,” said Charles Cornell, general manager of Community Futures Okanagan Similkameen.
He said the loans will likely have strict criteria attached that businesses must meet, including ineligibility for previous programs like the Canada Emergency Business Account (CEBA) or the Business Credit Availability Program (BCAP).
Although they haven’t received concrete qualification requirements, Cornell also thinks that business must have been viable before March 1 and plan to be viable following the pandemic.
Cornell said the loans could be great for small businesses like janitorial services who lost work due to facilities being shut down, or newly opened cafes that might not have had an established payroll history prior to March 1, making them ineligible for other loan programs.
The Community Futures Emergency Loan Program funds are also restricted to covering operating expenses, like payroll, that are critical to keeping the business alive.
“You can’t use it to expand business,” said Cornell, also noting that paying off debt with the loan is also not possible.
The loans will likely become available to communities around the South Okanagan and Similkameen, including Osoyoos, Oliver, the Osoyoos Indian Band, the Lower Similkameen Indian Band, Keremeos, Oyama and Okanagan Falls. Cornell said applications are not open yet as they have not received the funds, but he anticipates they will be open within the next week.
