HEC gets Rs29,470.000m

RAWALPINDI: The federal government has made an allocation of Rs29470.000 million to Higher Education Commission (HEC) in the annual budget for the year 2020-21 which was presented here Friday evening.

The annual budget was presented by Federal Minister for Industries and Production, Hammad Azhar in National Assembly budget session. Out of total allocation of funds given to HEC estimating Rs29470.000 million an amount of Rs23044.568 million are earmarked only for ongoing schemes while as sum of Rs6425.442 would be spent on initiating new schemes during the new fiscal year 2020-21.

At present HEC has over 112 old schemes in hand to complete this year whereas it would initiate 30 new projects during current fiscal year 2020-21. The key higher education projects to be completed under old schemes commencement of 4 year undergraduate programme in Water Resource Engineering and Petroleum engineering at UET Taxila, development of new campus of Government College University (GCU), Faisalabad, establishment of IT and Library Infrastructure for new disciplines of Food and Energy Engineering and Science at University of Agriculture in Faisalabad.

In the year 2020-21 HEC could focus on four sectoral objectives including enhancing access to high education without compromising on quality, improving quality of higher education, ensuring relevance of high education to national needs besides embracing the fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR).

Similarly for COVID-19 responsive sectoral objectives HEC has planned for developing national knowledge database for viral and other diseases, to develop vaccines and understanding genetics/genomics of COVID-19. It would also pilot/full scale production of COVID-19 related medical equipment. The commission has also decided to go to next level of tele-education by providing affordable digital gadgets, internet and other facilities to students as well as capacity building of universities and faculty.

In 2020-21, the focus would remain on consolidation by earmarking more funds to complete ongoing project and only to start top priority new schemes. HEC would negotiate with World Bank to double the TA support in HEDP project to take it to $100 million for conducting meaningful research in health sector in pandemic and post pandemic period.

Moreover, during new fiscal year the investment made by HEC through various challenge funds

HEDP programme would realize into products. It is expected that many prototypes of masks, sanitizers, PPEs, Ventilators and other medical equipment would be developed and produced in collaboration with private sector. Some of the health and medical universities started clinical trials of existing medicines on COVID-19 and some others were studying genetics of virus as well as trying to develop some drugs or vaccines for treatment. HEC hopes that in 2020-21, considerable progress in this regard would be made. Government is committed to support any such efforts that could result in producing prototypes or products for this purpose.

An allocation of Rs29,000 million has been proposed for PSDP in year 2020-21 in respect of 131 HEC projects. This includes Rs24, 395.016 million for ongoing projects and Rs4,604,984 for new schemes.

The federal government has also made allocation of Rs83,363 million in the budget estimates 2020-21 as compared with Rs77,262 million provided in 2019-20. The bulk of expenditure at Rs70, 741 million has been allocated for Teritiary Education Affairs and Services in the budget 2020-21 which is 84.86 per cent of the total allocation under this head.

Similarly, to make reforms in education sector, the government has allocated Rs5 billion and for its modification a sum of Rs30 billion have also been earmarked in the current budget 2020-21.