Consider raising student loan limit to 1,350 million VND/month

(Baonghean.vn) - The Government Office has just issued Document No. 9705/VPCP-KTTH notifying the direction of Deputy Prime Minister Vu Van Ninh on the implementation of Decision No. 157/2007/QD-TTg dated September 27, 2007 on credit for students.

Accordingly, the Deputy Prime Minister directed the Ministry of Finance to review and calculate the financial capacity of the plan to adjust the loan level from 1,100,000 VND/month/student to 1,350,000 VND/month/student; and report to the Prime Minister before November 27, 2015.

After nearly 9 years of implementation, the total capital of the program has reached over 25 trillion VND, fully and promptly meeting the borrowing needs of beneficiaries according to regulations; the total outstanding debt has reached nearly 25 trillion VND. The program has helped more than 3.2 million students to borrow capital to cover their study expenses. Currently, there are 1.1 million households with outstanding debt at the Vietnam Bank for Social Policies, with 1.3 million students borrowing capital for study.

Students living in the community room of Vinh Trung Residential Area, Vinh City

The program's goal is to "partially support living expenses," but for the majority of students who borrow money, they are children of poor households or households with difficult circumstances, living in the provinces or rural areas, and coming to the city to study, in addition to tuition fees, they also have to pay for accommodation, transportation, and other living expenses, so they face difficulties.

Therefore, it is necessary to consider increasing the loan level for the student credit program, because in fact, since the implementation of this program (September 2007) up to now, the loan level has been adjusted many times. At the time of starting the program, the loan level was 800 thousand VND/month and after nearly 2 years, on August 26, 2009, the loan level was increased by 60 thousand VND/month to 860 thousand VND/month/student and from November 15, 2010, the Prime Minister decided to increase the maximum loan level for students to 900 thousand VND/month.

Vinh University student housing area in Hung Binh ward is preparing to welcome students to move in.

The most recent loan increase was from August 1, 2013, when the Prime Minister issued a decision to raise the loan amount to 1.1 million VND/month/student.

According to the actual survey results in some provinces and cities in the 2014-2015 school year, the cost of studying for a student ranges from 3 million VND/month to 3.5 million VND/month (the cost for a rural student studying in the city is about 3.5 million VND/month), the current loan level of 1.1 million VND/month only meets about 31.4% to 37% of the student's study cost needs.

In particular, recently, according to the roadmap for increasing tuition fees, the Government has issued Decree 86/2015/ND-CP on the mechanism for collecting and managing tuition fees. According to the tuition fee ceiling stipulated in the Decree, the average tuition fee may increase by about 10%./.

Thanh Thuy