BN partly to blame for drop in PTPTN repayments, says Teo
KUALA LUMPUR: The Barisan Nasional (BN) administration’s move to extend the grace period for the National Higher Education Fund Corporation (PTPTN) loan repayment is partly to blame for the lower collection this year, said Deputy Education Minister Teo Nie Ching.
Teo said it was unfair to fully blame the Pakatan Harapan (PH) government for removing 429,945 PTPTN borrowers from the Immigration blacklist for the drop in loan repayments from January to September.
“I do not deny that the removal (of PTPTN borrowers’ names) from the (Immigration) blacklist has something to do with the decrease in repayments.
“However, the decrease is not solely caused by this.
“During the (October) 2017 unveiling of the 2018 Budget, then prime minister (Datuk Seri Najib Razak) announced the extension of the grace period for repaying (PTPTN loans) from six months to one year, which came into force in November (last year).
“That is why since January this year, there has been a decrease in repayments.
“The January collection was RM297 million compared with RM351 million for January last year,” she said.
She added that in March, total repayment collected decreased to RM293 million compared with RM384 million collected for the same month last year.
Teo said this when answering a supplementary question from Khairy Jamaluddin (Barisan Nasiona-Rembau) during the question time at the Dewan Rakyat yesterday.
Khairy had claimed that the decrease in repayments was due to the removal of PTPTN borrowers from the Immigration blacklist.
His insinuation was in response to her answer to his main question regarding how many PTPTN loans had been repaid after the removal of the borrowers’ names from the blacklist.
Her earlier answer to Khairy’s first question was that there had been a drop in PTPTN repayments to RM817.56 million for the period of June to September this year, compared with RM1.3 billion last year.
Former higher education minister Datuk Seri Idris Jusoh (BNBesut) asked her whether PTPTN’s collection this year could rival the nearly RM4 billion for last year.
While raising the supplementary question, he claimed that PH had promised, in the run-up to the 14th General Election, that it would exempt borrowers from repaying.
Teo said PH had never promised to completely do away with PTPTN loan repayments as they had only promised that such repayments were to be done based on the borrowers’ capability to do so.
“If we seek to achieve the (nearly) RM4 billion (PTPTN loan repayments for this year), it would be difficult.
“The decrease in repayments is not just due to PH, but also BN (past administration) extending the grace period.
“One cannot just blame PH. That is not correct and unfair,” she said.
In replying to a question from Dr Hasan Bahrom (PH-Tampin) over whether the ministry was considering introducing a measure where students need only repay certain percentage of the loan based on their academic performance, she said it was part of the holistic study into PTPTN.
On Sept 30, PTPTN chairman Wan Saiful Wan Jan said the corporation had come up with a proposed mechanism to help lowearning graduates repay their loans until their salary reached RM4,000.