More Iowans are leaving the corporate world and starting their own businesses, according to new figures from the Iowa office of the U-S Small Business Administration. The report shows more than 400 loans were made to Iowa business owners during the first half of the fiscal year for a total just over 90-million dollars. District S-B-A director Joe Folsom says both of those numbers are up from a year ago. “It’s just slightly more loans. The loans are up about two-percent but the significant change is in the dollar amounts,” Folsom says. “That dollar amount is up 54-percent from the same period in our previous fiscal year.” Folsom says the goal is to see 25-percent of the new loans going toward start-ups or businesses that have been in existence two years or less. During the first half of this fiscal year, he says more than 50-percent of the loans went to start-ups. Folsom says most of the increase took place in the 504 loan program, which is the “fixed asset financing” program, focused on buildings and equipment, the sorts of assets and investments that typically result in more job creation. He says the 402 loans made during the past six months created or retained more than 13-hundred Iowa jobs. Folsom says he’s hopeful the increase in the amount of loans and the dollars involved is an indication of the economic direction the state is taking “and how things are happening and working for Iowa.” Businesses with fewer than 500 employees or less than five-million dollars in sales a year are considered “small” businesses, which includes well over nine out of every ten businesses in Iowa.
