The Iowa offices of the U-S Small Business Administration are crowing over the record number of loans made statewide during the just-completed fiscal year. The director of the Des Moines office, Cheryl Eftink, says 533 loans were made for about 86-point-4 million dollars. The loans went to businesses in 93 of Iowa’s 99 counties. Eftink says the fiscal year’s totals are six percent higher in approval numbers and seven percent higher in dollar values over the previous year.Eftink says the loans to small businesses created or retained more than 41-hundred Iowa jobs. Of the 533 loans, Eftink says there’s no one category of business that saw more growth than any others.They ranged from beauty shops to motels and from an archery range to pharmacies. The most loans went to the following counties: Polk (72), Linn (26), Woodbury (22), Scott and Black Hawk (20 each). The counties that saw no loans are: Kossuth, Emmett, Monroe, Osceola, Palo Alto and Worth.
