Students availing education loans go down but total loan amount rises

Kannur: Even as education loans continue to mount, the number of people availing the same is decreasing. There has been an increase of 15.88 percent in the total sanctioned educational loans for the financial year 2022-23 when compared to the previous year. However, the number of students who took loans decreased by 3.69 percent. 

As per the Financial Review Report 2023, loans have been sanctioned to 2,84,780 students till March 2023. This comes up to an amount of Rs 12,897.19 crore. 

It was in 2017 that the highest number of students availed loans for their studies (3,69,041). In later years, the number of borrowers has been fluctuating.

In 2022-23, public sector commercial banks will lead the credit disbursement. 86.62 percent (Rs 11,720 crore) from public sector banks. Grameen Bank disbursed Rs 482.66 crore and private sector commercial banks disbursed Rs 1164.53 crore. Small finance banks have disbursed educational loans of Rs 20.60 crore and cooperative banks Rs 57.41 crore.

The number of students opting for engineering has decreased sharply in recent times. This is also reflected in the number of students taking loans, S Premkumar, State Level Bankers Committee (SLBC) convener said.