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Small Business Administration (SBA) Administrator Karen Mills was in San Antonio Monday to discuss ways both the agency and the Obama administration are working on to further encourage lending to small businesses.

Mills spoke at the annual International Franchise Association convention.

These efforts, Mills says, include asking Congress for additional funding for its loan programs.

In February of 2009, the SBA received $730 million in federal stimulus funding as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. However, this wasn’t enough to meet the loan demand and in December, the SBA received an additional $125 million from Congress.

“We immediately were able to get that out as well. (But) it will run out at the end of this month,” Mills says, adding that the president has asked Congress for another extension in funding.

SBA spokesman Jonathan Swain says the president called for extending the recovery act provisions for the SBA’s 7a and 504 Certified Development Company loan programs through Sept. 30, 2010. The House passed legislation that would do so and it included $323 million to fund the extension. The U.S. Senate has not yet acted on the proposal.

“We are continuing to discuss it with the Senate and are hopeful we will see the extension move forward soon,” Swain says.

If granted, Mills says, the additional funds will be used to increase the loan limit for its 7(a) and 504 loan programs from $2 million to $5 million. Mills says about 10 percent or 12 percent of the loans made with recovery funds have gone to franchisees. Many of these franchisees, she says, have expressed the need for larger loan limits in order to purchase buildings or to make acquisitions.

“So, we’ve proposed to Congress that we increase these loans,” she says.

Other things the SBA is looking to do is extend the 90 percent guarantee on its 7(a) loan program.

The Recovery Act, among other things, temporarily raised the guarantee on the 7(a) loan program up to 90 percent through the end of the calendar year 2009, or until funds set aside for the program were exhausted.

Prior to the enactment of the law, the guarantee on the 7(a) loan program was between 75 percent and 85 percent.

The act also temporarily eliminated fees for borrowers on the 7(a) loans as well as fees for both borrowers and lenders on the 504 loans through the end of the year or until funding for the enhanced programs are exhausted.

The 504 CDC loans are principally used for land, new building construction, acquisition and rehab of existing buildings, long-term machinery and equipment purchases, and debt refinancing.

Interestingly, Mills says, the agency is also seeking to use its 504 loan program to refinance owner-occupied commercial real estate mortgages.

Mills says that in this present economic environment, in an effort to get commercial mortgages off their books, some banks may be unwilling to renew commercial real estate mortgages even if the owners have never missed a payment.

Using the 504 loan program in this capacity temporarily, she says, could benefit these business owners.

Mills says the agency has been meeting with small and large banks as well as small businesses and community leaders around the country to develop the measures that it is seeking from Congress. And, she says she believes these measures are ones that will be easy to implement.

“We can do those things quickly within the programmatic structure that we already have (in place) at very cost-effective rates,” she says.

NSW will join the national industrial relations system from next year, cutting red tape for more than 200,000 of the State’s mall businesses and charities.

Following negotiations with the Commonwealth, the NSW Government has agreed to participate in the national IR system, Fair Work Australia.

The decision means that, from January 2010, the Commonwealth’s Fair Work Act will cover every employer and employee in the private sector in NSW. About half a million workers in the private sector in NSW will come under the umbrella of the national IR system from next year.

The decision includes the following arrangements:

• Seven members of the NSW Industrial Relations Commission will be appointed to Fair Work Australia;
• Fair Work Australia will be located in the Hunter and the Illawarra as well as Sydney; and
• The Fair Work Ombudsman and the NSW Office of Industrial Relations will work together for a period of 3½ years to ensure that employers and employees know their rights and responsibilities in the national system.

The NSW Government will introduce an urgent Bill into Parliament for the referral of industrial relations powers to the Commonwealth.