WASHINGTON— Bowing to bipartisan pressure in Congress, the Trump administration said it would release the names of borrowers who received Paycheck Protection Program loans of $150,000 or more, accounting for about 75% of funds lent through the program.
The Treasury Department and Small Business Administration said Friday they would disclose business names, addresses, demographic data, number of jobs supported and other details. Specific loan amounts won’t be disclosed, but the government will place each loan in one of five size categories ranging from $150,000 to the maximum loan amount of $10 million, the agencies said.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had previously resisted disclosing loan-level data for the $670 billion program, saying disclosing specific loan amounts would be tantamount to disclosing confidential business information since the amounts are based on monthly payroll.
For loans of less than $150,000, the agencies said they would disclose summary information broken down by ZIP Code, industry, business type and various demographic categories.
The agencies didn’t say when the data would be released.
To date, the only known borrowers are those who have acknowledged receiving the loans voluntarily, or due to securities disclosure laws.
Members of Congress, labor unions and media companies including Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal, had pushed for disclosure of borrowers, saying the public had a right to know how taxpayer funds were being spent. Some also contended that the disclosure would make it easier to determine whether undeserving companies received funding.
Under the policy announced Friday, however, most of the borrowers who took advantage of the taxpayer-funded forgivable loans will remain unknown. Of the roughly 4.6 million borrowers in the program, about 86% took out loans worth less than $150,000, according to data released by the SBA.
But loans of greater than $150,000 represent 73% of the total amount approved under the PPP.
“We are striking the appropriate balance of providing public transparency, while protecting the payroll and personal income information of small businesses, sole proprietors and independent contractors,” said Mr. Mnuchin in a statement.
The compromise was “agreed with bipartisan leaders” of the Senate Small Business Committee, Treasury and SBA said.
Senate Small Business Committee Chairman Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) praised the decision, saying in a statement that “the American people deserve to know how effective the PPP was in protecting our nation’s small businesses and the tens of millions of Americans they employ.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) said in a statement Friday, “This reversal is a good start and will help us determine if taxpayer money went where Congress intended—to the truly small and unbanked small business.”
Write to Ryan Tracy at ryan.tracy@wsj.com
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