Islamabad:May 28: Out of the total development budget of Rs14 billion allocated for the Higher Education Commission (HEC) for financial year 2011-2012, only Rs9.763 billion were released till March 2012.

Sources told ‘The News’ that recurring budget of Rs9.456 billion was allocated for the HEC for the fourth quarter of this financial year. Out of which, only Rs3.36 billion were released thus leaving an amount of more than Rs6 billion that needs to be provided by the government to the HEC as recurring grant during next five weeks.
The recurring grant of the HEC is mainly meant to subsidise the cost of higher education institutions (HEI) as budgetary support and sustain the National Research Programmes.Sources said that the situation with release of development funds is also not promising, as no progress has been made on that account for release of fourth quarter grant and additional Rs2.5 billion supplementary grant.If adequate funding is not provided, the process of newly approved projects will halt, the sources said.The news.