Minister of State for Federal Education and Professional Training Engr Muhammad Baligh Ur Rehman attended the signing ceremony of MOU for the 7th phase between HEC (Pakistan) and USA on the cooperation to renew the Pak-US Science and Technology cooperation program today.
Minister of State thanked the organizers of the event and said that it’s great pleasure to witness such an auspicious ceremony. He said that the knowledge based society are dependent on creating and supporting the facilities of discovery and dissemination of knowledge and preparing human capital to add value to the society. He further added that we appreciate the enhanced support of US government in this connection and are optimistic about this program which will further build S & T research capacity in Pakistani Universities.
Talking about the higher education, Minister of State said that higher education is amongst the priority of our government. We have increased its budget from RS. 43.121 billion to Rs. 78 billion. HEC is contributing 3.9 million dollars to augment 4.4 million dollars contribution being made by the US government which is highly appreciable. Government of Pakistan has taken many initiatives for the promotion of higher education like fee reimbursement scheme and laptop scheme etc. Foreign scholarship programs of HEC is planned to be increased to 15000 from 7000 in near future.
Ministry of Federal Education, Ministry of Planning Development and Reforms and HEC are actively working on creating Knowledge Corridor connecting Pakistani and US universities.
In the end State Minister said that we earnestly believe that investment in knowledge pays the best dividends, and this MOU signed today will make the long term and sustained progress for both the countries.
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