Beginning September, beneficiaries of the Programme of Advancement Through Health and Education (PATH) who apply to the Students’ Loan Bureau (SLB) will no longer require guarantors to support their applications. 

Dr. Clarke said that the ‘no guarantor policy’ reaped success with wards of the State, with the SLB now having 98 applicants from that category, up from 46 a year before.  

In addition, the Minister announced that for fiscal year 2023/24, the SLB plans to make an additional 4,200 grants of $60,000 available to students from PATH households or from households with income of less than $1.5 million. Students will also benefit from a waiver of application fees to access loans from the SLB. 

Dr. Clarke said; “Madame Speaker, we are preserving, maintaining, increasing and sharing the gains of economic reform and economic recovery.”

Further, the Minister announced that the full implementation of the SLB loan management system will be completed during the 2023/24 fiscal year and will include online loan repayment, online loan balance queries, and online loan statements.

The first phase of implementation of the new loan management system, was launched in June 2022 and allowed for all applications and supporting documents to be submitted online.  

The Minister stated that a total of 7,111 SLB customers benefited from a two per cent point reduction in the interest rate on their loans by keeping their accounts with the SLB up to date.