Government has claimed that it has secured $40 million as seed money for the loan scheme that has been re-introduced by Government to cushion tertiary students failing to pay their fees.

This was said by Higher and Tertiary Education, Science and Technology Development Minister Professor Amon Murwira in the National Assembly yesterday.

He was responding to questions from backbenchers on the reintroduction of student grants.

Prof Murwira said they had mobilised $8,4 million from the ministry’s resources and $5 million from the Zimbabwe Manpower Development Fund (Zimdef).

“We have also mobilised further funding from the student line (in the ministry’s budget) so that it gets to $20 million.

“With this money, we have also negotiated with CBZ that if we seed with $20 million, ‘how much can you top up?’ Initially they wanted to top up by 10 times more, but because of inflation they have reduced it to two times more.

“So we now have $40 million,” said Prof Murwira.

Government called off the loans over a decade ago after most beneficiaries failed to pay back the money upon completing their studies.

In the run up to the 2013 and 2018 elections, government also introduced a similar youth empowerment business fund which was only accessed by ZANU PF youth who never paid back the money running into millions of dollars.

Nothing has been done through the years to recover the funds.

Minister Mureira added that they would ask for more funding in the 2020 National Budget so that more students get grants.

“In the next budget, we will ask Parliament to provide this fund with support because it’s a growing fund,” added Prof Murwira.