Government officials have quietly awarded $23.3 million to the New York Board of Trade, which becomes the latest downtown institution to benefit from a program to halt business departures from lower Manhattan.

More than $44 million was distributed during the latest round of grants in mid-November, part of $170 million in job creation and retention grants approved for 61 companies so far. Government officials claim the overall program helped retain 47,468 jobs and create 3,171 new jobs in lower Manhattan.

The city and state - which did not release individual grant amounts in mid-November - have another $150 million to approve for lower Manhattan employers with at least 200 workers downtown.

"It's very nice to have them [the Board of Trade] back, and we're going to have more announcements about other large companies," said Charles Gargano, chairman of the Empire State Development Corp. "They're the ones who bring thousands of employees back and bring foot traffic back to the smaller businesses downtown. We can only do so much."

Other grants went to the New York Mercantile Exchange ($5 million), American Management Systems ($900,000), Banco Popular ($700,000), Commerzbank ($3.7 million), Fimilac ($1.28 million), Glazier Group ($200,000), Medical Health & Research Association ($530,000), New York Law School ($200,000), Oppenheimer ($4.2 million) and RR Donnelly ($4.2 million).

"Unfortunately, since we put this report out in April, not much has changed," said Bettina Damiani, project director of Good Jobs New York, which will release its latest grant report today detailing unspent funds. "There hasn't been a proactive attempt to create jobs in the city. Look at the jobs being protected versus the people who are still not working. Does this help the unemployed airline worker in Kew Gardens or the unemployed garment factory worker in Chinatown?"

The Board of Trade, which is the parent company of the Coffee, Sugar and Cocoa Exchange and the New York Cotton Exchange, lost its trading floor at 4 World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

Their employees are working out of temporary space at 174 Hudson St., newly permanent space at 39 Broadway and a backup trading floor in Long Island City while a new trading floor is built within the New York Mercantile Exchange's headquarters at the World Financial Center.

"We were already in the process of totally rehabilitating the facility ," said Board of Trade spokesman Ted Davis. "It will be a state of the art facility."