Governor Greg Abbott hosted a roundtable discussion with small business owners in Dallas and promised to extend the state to support and promote their small business.

Gov. Abbott used Ruibals Plants of Texas on Thursday to conduct this meeting about the growth of business, calling small businesses the backbone of the Texas economy.

He said, "Nine out of ten businesses in Texas are small, and small businesses employ about half of all the employees in the entire state of Texas."

The state leads the nation in corporate relocations and expansions and, in 2020, commercial real estate development. Abbot said, "Today, Texas, if it were its own country, now has the ninth-largest economy in the world."

"So we're growing internationally."

It’s an economy that is clobbered by the pandemic.

"We know there are businesses that need to come back to work," Abbott said. "There are employees who have bills to pay. Some jobs must be open."

The governor assured small businessman that they could expect an increase in the economy soon because numbers related to COVID-19 are trending down.

He further added, "As of yesterday, we had the lowest number of hospitalizations that we’ve had in exactly two months. "

"It was Dec. 11 that we had this low number of hospitalizations. We had the lowest positivity rate since November, and so all the numbers are moving in the right direction."

The state is working on strategies to accelerate the process for teachers taking vaccines.