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Major reforms see HESLB collect 1.4tri/- in six years

Major reforms see HESLB collect 1.4tri/- in six years

MAJOR reforms which are ongoing at the Higher Education Students’ Loans Board (HESLB) have enabled collection of around 1.4tri/- in six financial years, due to increased compliance from its beneficiaries particularly the informal and private sector.

HESLB Director General, Mr Abdul-Razaq Badru, disclosed this yesterday at an event to award the best ten employers from Dar es Salaam for timely presenting their employees’ monthly loan payments.

The institutions are NBC Bank, Diamond Trust Bank, Coca Cola Kwanza, Feza Schools, Serengeti Breweries Limited, SICPA Tanzania, BRAC Tanzania, Ifakara Health Institute (IHI), Viettel (Halotel) Tanzania and GIZ.

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Mr Badru noted that the reforms carried out in the board’s operations, systems and management from the year 2016 made possible the achievement, indicating that around 300bn/- was yet to be recovered.

He, however, indicated that during the financial year 2021/2022 the board collected around 182bn/- of which Dar es Salaam accumulated 12.5bn/- equivalent to 6.8 per cent of the total collection countrywide.

For the case of the present financial year of 2022/2023, by April Dar es Salaam had collected around 17bn/- about 12 per cent of the entire collection of 141.3bn/-.

“There is a huge compliance among the beneficiaries in the repayment of their loans particularly the ones from the informal and private sector, which accumulate at least 6 per cent of the annual collections,” said Mr Badru.

He added: “The money being collected covers the board’s budgetary needs by 32 per cent on an annual basis…the amount has continued to increase every year.”

The DG further revealed that by HESLB enrolling into the e – Government Agency (eGA) has enabled their systems to be integrated with other national schemes, thereby giving them access to the various data and information which is of importance in their operations.

He, however, observed that through the system the board has been linked with other employers and could easily exchange information of their loan beneficiaries.

Besides, the DG said they were going on with further improvements in their systems to deal with arising challenges as the board is currently implementing its agenda of transformation for sustainability in reaching their goal of becoming a revolving fund.

“The more robust the systems become, the more efficient they become as we have witnessed recently. The government investment in recent years from 2015/2016 has seen an increase of the loan budget from 300bn/- to 650bn/- per year,” he said.

He indicated that in the present financial year and the next one the budget has gone up to 739bn/- attributing the scale up in the increase in investment and systems improvement.

He applauded the companies and institutions for voluntarily complying in filing their employee’s loan repayments, urging other employees to emulate the same as doing otherwise was acting contrary to the requirement of the law.

For his part, the Chief Executive Director at Ifakara Health Institute Dr Honorati Masanja extended appreciation to HESLB for recognising their contribution, calling upon them to prepare a strong mechanism for reaching the employees who do not comply through awareness campaigns.

“It’s critical that a similar mechanism used to reach out to us be used for the case of employees that have not complied so that they can change,” said Dr Masanja.

HESLB Assistant Director of Loan Repayment, Mr Fidelis Joseph noted that currently the loan beneficiaries and employees are not required to physically go to the board’s offices as things have been simplified through the loan repayment portal.

Mr Joseph also notified the beneficiaries who have overly repaid their loans to follow instructions and attach relevant documentation required in the system.