The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

THE Education Loan Authority’s (ELA) outstanding loans have decreased in number by 21 percent or almost 1,000 since 2018, its chairman said yesterday.

Miriam Emmanuel, addressing the House of Assembly during the mid-term Budget debate, said: “We also had 37 persons who paid off their student loans during the period of January 2020 to January 2021, totalling $467,702.”

While the Authority deferred loan payments for up to three months at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, she added that it had still been able to meet interest payments worth $2.6m on its bond debt between August 2020 and February 2021.

Ms Emmanuel added: “The Authority’s collections for the period January 2020 to January 2021 stands at $842,191.97.” The number of outstanding loans in 2018 was 4,426, but that has now dropped to 3,495, a decrease of 21 percent.

Promising to restart the student loan programme, Ms Emmanuel said: “We not only seek to restore the programme, but ensure that the necessary control provisions are in place to say that it’s sustainable and viable.”

The ELA last year said it had collected nearly $1.8m in outstanding loans, dropping the total balance from $131.732m to $129.933m as at June 2020.