KIGALI - The Student Financing Agency for Rwanda (SFAR) has so far collected Rwf 1.6 billion since the exercise of loan recovery commenced early last year.

This was revealed yesterday by the SFAR Director General, Emmanuel Muvunyi, in an interview with The New Times.

According to Muvunyi, though the body has been successful in meeting its target for the year, they still face problems of locating a big number of beneficiaries whose whereabouts are still unknown.

"We have so far alerted 367 institutions in the country telling them to encourage their employees to declare and start repaying their student loans, but so far only 165 of these institutions are cooperating,” said Muvunyi.

He added that people’s perceptions on repaying the loans had changed for the better which has been instrumental in making their work easier.

"Apparently some people have started understanding the importance of paying back this money and are willing to do so,” said Muvunyi, cited a total of 25 people who have come personally to the body’s headquarters to declare themselves and are currently paying back the money.

The loan recovery project aims at ensuring that everybody who benefited from the government bursary pays back the loan he was offered so the government is able to sponsor more students.

SFAR Director of Loan Recovery, Desire Gacinya, said that the institution has a total of 3,312 employees currently repaying the loans.

However, he revealed that the body had recently discovered that some institutions had paid more than their employees owed, adding that they were going to refund the money.

The biggest percentage of SFAR’s budget is financed by the government. This year alone, Rwf10 billion was set aside to facilitate government-sponsored students.

SFAR was established by Cabinet on July 29, 2003 as an autonomous agency under the Ministry of Education (MINEDUC) to oversee loan disbursements and ensure that those who get the loans pay back.

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