Bangkok  - More than 160,000 Thai university graduates failed to repay their loans in the just-ended fiscal year, up 9 per cent from the number of defaulters in the year before, media reports said Friday.

Student Loan Fund (SLF) manager Tada Martin said Thursday that in the fiscal year that ended September 30, 161,800 graduates had defaulted on their loans and now owe the government 15.82 billion baht (479.4 million dollars).

Last year, the number of defaulting graduates was 148,613.

"Defaulters are students who failed to repay five consecutive installments and ended up being sued by the SLF," Tada told The Nation newspaper.

Since its establishment more than a decade ago, the fund has lent more than 300 billion baht to about 2.5 million students nationwide to help finance their studies. About 500,000 have defaulted on their repayments.

The fund has recently set up an arbitration process to persuade defaulters to repay their debt without taking them to court, saving the fund more than 230 million baht in legal fees this year alone. (dpa)