NED presents Rs2,139 million annual budget

The management of the NED Engineering and Technology University on Thursday presented a Rs2,139.39 million budget for the year 2017-18.

NED Vice Chancellor Professor Dr Sarosh Hashmat Lodi, who chaired the proceedings, informed the meeting participants that the varsity had started the fiscal year with a shortfall of Rs145.341 million. 

However, he claimed, all efforts would be made to make it a surplus budget as the university managed to do last year. According to the VC, NED’s budget for 2016-17 was also with a Rs89.703 million deficit but later it was converted into a Rs1.182 million surplus budget. He mentioned that 24 departments were working in six faculties in which the varsity has 29 undergraduate and 57 postgraduate programmes.

During the meeting, members gave permission for restructuring of various departments; transfer of biomedical engineering into electrical computer engineering faculty and departments of environmental engineering and food engineering into chemical process engineering faculty.

The meeting participants also approved the transfer of architectural engineering, management sciences, development studies and economic finance under one faculty, whereas, the civil engineering programme was renamed to civil and petroleum engineering.

The members were informed that during 2016-2017, a total of 9,496 students were awarded admission to undergraduate programmes and the figure would rise to 9,600 students in 2017-18. 

Similarly, a total of 2,643 students secured admission to masters programmes last year and it would be increased to 2,700 students this year. “This year, 150 people have been registered in PhD programmes, while last year there were 122 people and 24 foreign students enrolled in various programmes.”  

The NED VC informed the participants that 12,450 students were currently enrolled in the varsity, while the university has a total of 451 faculty members of which 158 persons are PhD degree holders and 89 teachers are enrolled in PhD programmes.

Dr Lodhi mentioned that Rs2.2 million had been invested in the Dr Abul Kalam Library which has 4,000 e-journals, 142,000 e-books, 31,977 hard copy journals and 97,817 books.  The university awarded scholarships worth Rs27 million among 826 students during 2016-17 of which 55 were funded by private donors.

He said 107 students had shone in various international competitions and 15 students were currently studying at foreign universities under the student exchange programme. The NED VC also mentioned that 2,275 students availed summer internship programmes in 615 departments and organizations, while 80 study tours were also arranged for the students.