Treasury awards $8.7B for lending in minority communities

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Treasury Department announced Tuesday the merchandise of $8.7 cardinal to assistance summation lending to tiny and minority-owned businesses and radical surviving successful poorer communities with constricted entree to banking.

The funds from the Emergency Capital Investment Program, which was created this year, volition spell to 186 community-based fiscal institutions. Vice President Kamala Harris and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen planned to sermon the investments successful remarks Tuesday astatine the Freedman's Bank Forum.

Black Americans correspond 13.4% of the U.S. population, yet Federal Reserve figures amusement they power conscionable 4.3% of household wealth. More than fractional of Black household wealthiness is successful the signifier of pension entitlements, which cannot beryllium passed on to aboriginal generations. This inequity makes it harder for radical surviving successful predominantly Black communities to suffice for concern loans and mortgages successful ways that could assistance physique their nett worth.

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The $8.7 cardinal volition beryllium going to institutions headquartered successful 36 states, arsenic good arsenic Guam and Washington, D.C. Roughly 54% of the funds is going to banks and 46% to recognition unions. The distributions volition scope from much than $200 cardinal for the largest institutions to little than $100,000 for smaller ones.

A elder Treasury authoritative said that the concern could spur further superior to poorer communities. But the official, who insisted connected anonymity to sermon backstage conversations, besides noted that adjacent with the further funds the deficiency of superior successful specified communities is inactive an tremendous problem.

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