KINGSTON, Jamaica – The Students’ Loan Bureau (SLB) will be offering new clients a repayment period of 10 years, instead of the current seven and five years.

Minister of Finance and the Public Service, Fayval Williams, announced plans to enhance the SLB’s offerings, during her 2025/26 Budget Debate opening presentation in the House of Representatives on Tuesday.

She indicated that while the repayment period will increase, the loan rates will remain unchanged.

“We are starting with that one step and will work rapidly to ensure the systems are in place to roll out the new loan offerings to make the lives of our tertiary students better and allow them to focus on attaining their educational goals to benefit themselves, their families and Jamaica, as a whole. The Students’ Loan Bureau is building bridges and transforming dreams,” the ministers stated.

Williams said the Government is committed to improving the SLB’s offerings by the beginning of the 2026/27 academic year in September 2026.

“A CAPRI (Caribbean Policy Research Institute) study has given us excellent suggestions on how to modernise the Students’ Loan Bureau’s offerings. We are committed to doing the overhaul of the student loan system and will engage CAPRI as we start that process this upcoming fiscal year. We are committed to an increase in the loan amount that students will be able to access and for the disbursement to include not only tuition but also housing, books and supplies, the cost of a laptop and a stipend for meals.

“We are also committed to a meaningful reduction in interest rates on the various loans and we are committed to longer loan-payment periods. These would be significant changes to how the Students’ Loan Bureau operates currently. So, we have to work with the Students’ Loan Bureau to be able to launch these initiatives for the new school year, starting September 2026. It is going to take time to implement these changes,” she said.

Meanwhile, Williams advised that the SLB will continue to implement changes that will make the entity more efficient and service oriented.

“It is working to move itself to another level, a higher level with a new and improved customer platform, which should have been launched in 2022 but is now targeted for the first quarter of the new fiscal year 2025/26,” she said.

The minister noted that the platform will allow students to view their loans, print statements and pay their loans online, among other functions.

“The SLB reported to me that the biggest challenge that students have been complaining about is accessing the information about their loans. However, SLB says that once their platform is launched, students will see significant improvements in efficiencies,” she said.

Williams further noted that there has been an 85 per cent increase in the number of Programme of Advancement Through Health and Education (PATH) beneficiaries accessing loans.

“During the 2023/24 fiscal year, the decision was taken by this Government to no longer require PATH beneficiaries to have a guarantor, and PATH beneficiaries would have a 100 per cent waiver for application fees. Since then, there has been an 85 per cent increase in the number of PATH beneficiaries in 2024/25 versus the figure in 2023/24,” she informed.

–         JIS