All eligible applicants for ESP Education Loan to get loans as 1,188 apply

A total of 1,188 students have applied for the Economic Stimulus Program (ESP) Education Loan, with the loan size now at Nu 1.112 billion (bn) as the last date for applications ended on June 30.

The ESP Steering Committee, in a meeting held on Friday, decided to support all eligible applicants. It further directed the ESP Secretariat and the Ministry of Finance to review and explore additional funds to support the actual loan amount approved by the Bank of Bhutan (BoB).

There are currently insufficient funds within the ESP to fund this, and India will not be topping up any further amount. Bhutan also cannot ask for a grant from any other source as a grant by one country cannot be co-funded by another. This means that, in all likelihood, the money will have to come from the government’s own resources.

The BoB will do its due diligence and see who is eligible, mainly based on the combined annual income of the parents being less than Nu 500,000, which is verified through Department of Revenue and Customs certificates, and also verification of the parents through the census record submitted to BoB.

If the DRC and Census documents are in order, then another criterion is that the college being applied to is a BQPCA-accredited college.

A candidate must have completed Class 12 and be enrolled in undergraduate or TVET programmes; be a full-time, in-person student admitted from July 2025 onward; be under 25 years of age; and not hold any full scholarship.

A guarantor for this scheme is mandatory. The applicant’s parents or legal guardian will act as the guarantor. If the parents or guardians have a poor credit record, the applicant is ineligible for the loan.

Despite the criteria, according to earlier BoB assessments, around 95% of applicants could well be eligible based solely on the income bracket, with 20% to 30% even showing nil income.

The original allocation for the ESP Education Fund was Nu 600 million (mn).

The original plan was to allocate Nu 150 mn annually over four years. However, during the first intake in 2025 itself, demand was so high that the government instructed the BoB not to limit the number of applicants.

The scheme was launched on 23 July 2025, and during that period, 457 applicants received loans totaling Nu 333.72 mn.

A second announcement was made in January 2026, when 110 applicants received Nu 97.67 mn.

This left a balance of Nu 168.61 mn available for the June 2026 summer intake, but when the applications opened on 2 June 2026, the BoB received 253 loan applications between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., amounting to Nu 266.08 mn, and BoB had to close the loan.

This led to a hue and cry, and the government extended the application date till 30 June, leading to the current scenario.