Should Government Abolish PTPTN Loans?

Once again, PTPTN (Malaysia National Higher Education Loan) came to the limelight lately with the wrong reasons. In conjunction with this, Finance Malaysia did a survey on Facebook Page asking our fans "Should Government Abolish PTPTN Loans?", and guess the answer given by majority of them? NO.

Emmm... What does this mean? It's pretty clear that majority of us thinks that PTPTN should be continue for the following reasons:

1. There is no FREE lunch in this world
2. Borrowers should repay what he borrows
3. The scheme did already help many financially distressed students pursuing tertiary education

Thanks for your participation in the survey. Yet, many readers keep asking Finance Malaysia, our view on this matter. Before answering you, we also highlighted that this blog is of freedom of speech, we're not political driven blog, and we tend to be political-neutral in writing. Below is our view on this issue:

1. We agreed that there is no free lunch, especially in Malaysia. We should change our mentality that Government owe us this and that things. We must put in our own efforts to make things happen, and Government's role is to facilitate the process to become easier and smoother. This is why PTPTN loan was offered at the beginning.
   
   
2. Regarding the interest rate charged, it's a mere 3% only. Does it really sky high? Definitely not. Why PTPTN charged 3%? This was because our inflation rate is around that figure. If you take last year inflation rate of 3.5% into calculation, PTPTN are making losses actually, although we repay back with 3% interest rate.
   
   
3. Without interest, anyone of us who qualify to go into varsities will take PTPTN loan, whether he/she is serious in his/her study or not. Why not borrow the money to spend, instead of study, if given free?
   
   
4. Without interest, what is the incentive for student to repay back the borrow amount as soon as possible? Without interest, I will be the one who use whatever money I have now to invest, do business, buy gadgets... last is PTPTN. Agree?
   
   
5. We believe this is one of the agenda purposely created by certain political parties to fish young voters, saying that they will abolish and cleared their outstanding PTPTN loan once they formed the new Government. (Please be neutral on this matter, then only think)
   
   
6. By writing-off the outstanding PTPTN loans amounting to billions of ringgit, Malaysia sure will went into financially distressed level. Then, all of the subsidies will be removed, public sector salary will be cut, all of us will protest because of this. Do you really want this to happen?
   
   

Anyway, this is one of the interesting preview running up to the anticipated general election. Finance Malaysia hopes that political parties from both sides should focus on things that really can benefiting the country. What's the point to form a new Government that will go into bankruptcy?

Before ending this posts, we must highlighted here that Government must clear the doubts by sorting it out fast. If not, many borrowers will wait and stop repayment in anticipating that Government will abolish it soon.

Another point was we lauded PTPTN's intention to reward those prompt and disciplined borrowers with a reduced 1% interest rate. However, why not PTPTN automatically reducing it without much hassle for borrowers to appeal? Now, borrowers must request > wait for revised terms and conditions agreement > print and sign > guarantors signatures > employers details > auto-deductions from salary > return back to PTPTN. Since these are eligible good paymasters, why not treati them automatically?