Delay to student loans details

Press, 5 September 1989, Page 4

Delay to student loans details

By

MARITA VANDENBERG

The announcement on whether a student loans scheme will go ahead next year has been delayed, ■ possibly until late next week.

Speculation was that the Minister of Education, Mr Goff, would have announced yesterday the level of. student fees. A spokeswoman for the Minister said yesterday that Mr Goff had been ill with flu.

On Friday, the Opposition spokesman on education, Dr Lockwood Smith, claimed the loans scheme was again in trouble. He said Mr Goff would have to' face the ‘.‘embarrassing task” on Monday of announcing the scheme had fallen through a -second time.

Dr Smith said he had heard from banking sources that the Government’s negotiations with the trading banks were in jeopardy.

There were two main areas of difficulty, he said. Banks did not want to act as debt collectors for the Government and they wanted a written guarantee that the Government would make good any bad debts. One option for Mr Goff was to tax defaulting graduates through the Inland Revenue Department, said Dr Smith.

“This poses a problem for Mr Goff because this department has indicated it is unprepared to act as a debt collector for the Government.” The second cause of the banks’ wariness was their fear that they could be left “holding the baby” if, after a change of government in 1990, an incoming National Government repealed the loans scheme, he said.