The Kenora and District Chamber of Commerce is disappointed there won’t be an extension to the the deadline to repay emergency pandemic loans for small businesses.

Tomorrow is the last day to pay back the CEBA loan.

Andy Scribilio president of the local chamber says they lobbied the federal government for an extension, but to no avail.

“Our thought on the business perspective it’s going to really hurt our people,” says Scribilo.

“Yes, you can go refinance with the bank, but you’re paying money on top of money and in today’s times, we really haven’t recovered from COVID yet.”

Scribilio adds this is a bad time of year to made the re-payments.

“It’s winter…it’s January.  We don’t have a lot of people coming in to shop downtown.  If everything boom, and was bright sunny sky, but today businesses are still struggling. There’s businesses across Canada…we can look locally.  It’s not very conducive to the environment we’re in.”

He points out that the Canadian Chamber estimates that 30 percent of businesses will go out of business because of the CEBA loans.