“If I commit suicide, the main cause will be to owe money to Icetex”: young people denounce excessive price increases

In recent days, complaints have been made public by those who agreed to credits of Icetexbecause in the most recent recipes they have increased the rates of the paid excessively. To the surprise of many, the values ​​are way above what was budgeted and in some cases they are unaffordable. Complaints are compounded by irregularities on the part of the entity’s managers, who do not provide adequate information, or failing that, do not provide a viable solution. Instead of being a help, for the students it has become a torture, because if the debt is not paid, it will continue to worsen.

One of the cases that has gone viral is that of the journalist sebastian palace, which showed how, from month to month, the fee increased by more than 200,000 pesos. Although she was able to readjust her accounts to meet her payments, she finds that many other young people cannot do the same:

Debt turns out to be something dark, to the point of affecting the sanity of creditors. Although people are aware that they owe this money, the problem lies in the feeling that they pay and pay, but this is not reflected in the decreasing amounts.

GlobeLiveMedia known one of the cases of these spontaneous increases. A complainant – who asked that her identity not be revealed to her – claims that when she took out the loan, in 2014, the projection indicated that in 10 years she would finish repaying the loan.

It is 50 million pesos that they gave to the communicator and political scientist. He graduated in 2020, he paid the Icetexbut, when he saw the increases in his receipt, he realized that not only had the installments increased, but now his projection shows he has 11½ years left to pay off the debt:

In the next image you can see that in February he paid 484,578 pesos, now in March he will have to deposit $669,802, that is, in a month they have increased by 185 $224.

In another test, we see that, despite the payment of the same, the distribution between the interests and the capital it’s not always the same. More or less 50% of the capital is allocated and the rest to interest, but, last month, only 37,860.63 pesos were paid in capital and the rest to interest, which she says she never authorized.

As can be seen from the payment receipt, something similar will happen in March, plus or minus 22% will go to principal (i.e. what they lent out) and the rest will go to interest. The complainant went a few days ago directly to the offices of the Icetexwhen presenting his case, they told him that the credits are tied to the inflationit means yes IPC increases, the debt will also increase. When asking for a solution, the entity replied that if it is not a beneficiary of the Sisben they can’t help it.

The situation for many is unbearable, one user through Twitter points out: “If I commit suicide, the main cause will be owing money to the Icetex”. Although drastic, this type of consideration is exhibited by several young people who cannot wait for the day when they can finish paying off the debt, who not only study in Colombia, but many have also applied for the loan to advance their study abroad.

The president of the Icetex, Maurice Torothrough a video explained that the reason for the increase was the inflation, a tax they must make by law. In the quotas, add the IPCplus some additional points of interest (which he did not determine).

Using money from abandoned accounts, the Icetex interest has been reduced to 140,000 students, but for now there will be no solution for other debtors, who for now will have to bear the costs.

Please see Mauricio Toro’s response below: