The Namibia Students Financial Assistance Fund (NSFAF) holds a financial asset in student loans of N$10.3 billion for the financial year that ended on 31 March 2024.
However, the auditor general's latest report on the accounts of NSFAF raised concerns over poor loan recovery management.
Based on the sample of recoveries tested, the auditors noted that the repayments were not properly reconciled against the student loan balances on the loan management system.
The auditors noted a difference of N$16,501, which is 5.5%, from a total sample tested amounting to N$298,758 between amounts invoiced by NUST and the statements provided by the institution during a third-party verification test.
Based on these differences, the auditors anticipate a projected misstatement of over N$17 million from the tested samples that were misstated.
The Auditor General says the above is a result of a lack of adequate reviewing and verification of invoices received from tertiary institutions against student statements for payment.
The Auditor General also found that the data used for the calculation of the Expected Credit Loss allowance was not properly confirmed regarding the list of deceased students with official records from the Ministry of Home Affairs, Immigration, Safety and Security.
Therefore, the report says they could not reliably assess the valuation of the expected credit loss allowance for the year under review, belonging to the deceased listing component, amounting to N$1.3 million of the total expected credit loss allowance amounting to N$4.3 billion as of 31 March 2024.
Credit loss allowance is money that NSFAF hopes that owing students will pay back, but the loss is that some of them will never pay back because they are dead or can't be traced. This is because NSFAF lost its records when it moved offices.
The Auditor General further says that NSFAF's financial statements are prepared with the belief that funds will be available to finance its future operations and that the realisation of assets and the settlement of liabilities will occur in the ordinary course of business.
For now, the board has approved a framework and timeline to reintegrate NSFAF into the Ministry of Education.