Fund offers deal to defaulting students
The Student Loan Fund (SLF) is planning to ask employers to make deductions from the salaries of loan recipients who have defaulted on their payments, but it is also offering incentives to debtors.
“We want to stop default problems,” SLF manager Thitima Vichairatana said yesterday.
She said as many as 53 per cent of loan recipients who graduated and got jobs did not repay the money they had borrowed from the SLF. Their defaults have affected current borrowers, as the SLF will receive a lower budget for the coming fiscal year.
“Our budget is down by Bt6.7 billion,” Thitima said.
In the 2013 fiscal year, the SLF has granted loans worth Bt31.3billion to 767,000 students.
In a bid to encourage recipients to clear their debts, the SLF will offer special deals.
Loan recipients who have not fallen behind schedule will receive a discount equivalent to 3.5 per cent of the principal if they clear all their debts between November this year and March next year.
“Those with overdue debts will be entirely forgiven any penalties – if they clear what is overdue,” Thitima said.
“And if they clear all their pending debts, they will also be given a special discount.”
She said the SLF had used many other measures to follow up on repayments, including requesting that employers take repayment records into account when considering hiring or promoting student-loan recipients.
Thitima said that within the next five years, the repayment records of SLF loan recipients would also be forwarded to the National Credit Bureau.
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