Student Loan Fund to take legal action against 400 000 students

From 60 000 to... 400 000 in seven months... Everything is fine.

30/11/07

The Student Loan Fund (SLF) plans to sue about 60 000 graduates for failing to repay loans that funded their studies. Fund manager Prempracha Supasamout said that defaulters rarely got back in touch even after being issued repayment notices and warned of possible legal action.

“We need to file the lawsuits by July 4 or else the statute of limitations for these cases will pass,” he said.

09/01/08

The Court of Justice has joined forces with the Student Loans Fund (SLF) to launch an arbitration project to prevent lawsuits against nearly 90 000 debtors from proceeding to court.The two agencies held a press conference yesterday morning at Bangkok's Ratchadaphisek Criminal Court.

Nearly 90 000 students have failed to meet the last five payment schedules for loans granted between 1999 and 2003.

09/06/08

The Student Loan Fund plans to file lawsuits against as many as 400 000 students with outstanding loans worth 4.3 Billion Baht, according to the fund's manager, Thada Martin. Mr Thada said that in the cases of debtors showing no willingness to negotiate, the fund would collect information on them for a database to support its court actions. He said the fund had been reluctant to file lawsuits against students, but the amount of unpaid debt was growing large.

He said the funds needed to be recovered so that money would be available to benefit students in the next generation. Normally, students are supposed to start repaying their loans two years after graduation. The fund has 1.7 million students who are due to pay back total loans of 14 Billion Baht. It has 9.7 Billion Baht worth of repayments to date, leaving 4.3 Billion Baht outstanding. (Bangkok Post)