Summary: Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO analyzed the Small Business Administration's (SBA) New England Lending and Recovery Project, focusing on: (1) whether SBA had expanded the Project to states beyond New Hampshire; (2) how many employees SBA assigned to the Project from other SBA offices and at what cost; (3) how many additional people SBA hired and assigned to the Project; and (4) how many loans SBA examined and guaranteed during the Project. GAO noted that: (1) during 1992, SBA expanded the Project to five other New England states; (2) from January 1992 through August 1992, SBA assigned 19 employees to work on Project loans in other states; (3) salary, overtime, and travel costs for the 19 employees totalled 15 percent of the Project's operating costs; (4) from January 1992 through September 1992, SBA temporarily hired 33 employees for the Project; (5) as of December 1992, SBA had examined 12,701 Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation-held loans in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island and had approved and guaranteed 277 loans totalling $82.8 million; and (6) in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, 78 loans totalling $31 million are still pending SBA approval.
