HAVRE, Mont. (NMB) – As this tumultuous 2021 comes towards a close, Bear Paw Development Corporation Executive Director Paul Tuss says they continue to assist local businesses in either starting up or keeping afloat.
Tuss says they did more business lending in 2021 than any year over the previous two decades.
“We passed the $3.5 million mark in businesses. These are mom and pop businesses, these are small businesses. So to get to that number $3.5 million in financing, for either new business startups or business expansions, that’s a lot of activity in a rural area of Montana.”
However, Tuss says there are plenty of challenges that must be overcome and businesses continue to face obstacles, such as the depletion of many funds providing COVID relief.
“A lot of those funds were available to businesses at the early part of the pandemic, and those programs have since gone away. Some of the programs are still available to us. And some of the programs that provided funding to Bear Paw will continue. But I think we’ve almost learned to live with this pandemic, as awful as that sounds. So even though I know we’re going to be dealing with the effects of COVID-19 and the pandemic for perhaps even years to come, I hope that we will just continue to obviously have the impact on our main streets that we did this year.”
Bear Paw Development serves Hill, Liberty, Blaine, Phillips and Chouteau Counties, as well as the Rocky Boy’s and Fort Belknap Reservations. They can be reached by phone at 265-9226.
