Sri Lanka Interest-Free Student Loan (IFSLS) Calculator

The Interest-Free Student Loan Scheme (IFSLS) is a Cabinet-approved programme run by the Ministry of Higher Education and administered through state banks. It funds a degree at an approved non-state institution for a student who earned three A/L passes but was not selected to a free place at a state university. The loan is paid to the institution, and — this is the whole point — the Treasury bears the interest. The student repays the principal only.

That design makes the core maths unusually simple, and this calculator keeps the exact and the illustrative figures clearly separated:

1. Repayment months. Multiply the repayment period in years by 12. A six-year term is 72 monthly payments.
2. Monthly instalment (exact). Divide the sanctioned loan amount by the number of repayment months: instalment = principal ÷ months. There is no interest term, so there is no EMI compounding.
3. Total you repay (exact). Equal to the principal. Interest paid by you is Rs 0. The tool cross-checks this by multiplying the instalment back over the full term and confirming it reconstructs the principal to the rupee.
4. Government subsidy (illustrative). To show the value of the interest waiver, the tool estimates what a commercial reducing-balance loan of the same size would cost. It approximates grace-period interest as principal × rate × study years on the fully-drawn balance, and repayment-period interest as EMI × months − principal, where EMI is the standard annuity payment P·i·(1+i)ᵐ ÷ ((1+i)ᵐ − 1) and i = rate ÷ 1200.
5. Eligibility. A self-declared boolean check: three A/L passes, not selected to a state university, an approved programme, and age within the commonly-cited window. The tool does not re-implement UGC Z-score selection — you declare your selection status.

Only the student-side numbers are asserted as exact, because they follow directly from the interest-free-to-borrower design. Every interest and subsidy figure is labelled illustrative: real disbursement is staggered across the study years and the scheme sets its own rate, so the subsidy shown is an order-of-magnitude estimate, not the Treasury's actual accounting.

• Ministry of Higher Education — Interest-Free Student Loan Scheme (eligibility, approved institutions, tenures)
• Bank of Ceylon — IFSLS administering bank (disbursement & repayment mechanics)
• People's Bank — IFSLS administering bank
• University Grants Commission — university admission status (eligibility branch only)

Scheme mechanics on this page were last reviewed on 2026-07-11. Scheme parameters such as the maximum loan value, age limit and tenures are set by the Ministry of Higher Education and can change — this tool treats them as editable inputs, not fixed claims. Confirm the current terms with MoHE or the administering bank before you apply.