Govt to mobilise Rs 1 trillion for better education infrastructure under HEFA

New Delhi, July 5: Union cabinet has goven its nod to the human resources development ministry to raise Rs 1 trillion from the market. The purpose of raising this vast funds from the market to facilitate better educational infrastructure.

Union Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar said that HEFA was the vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi for providing additional finance for promoting research and academic infrastructure in the higher educational institutions.

The minister said that the increase of allocation for education from Rs 65,867 crore in 2013-14 to Rs 1,10,000 crore in 2018-19 that is increase of 67 per cent is without any raise in fee. An amount of Rs 22,000 cr would be mobilised in the current year by HEFA depending on the actual requirement.

The minister further said that state-of-the-art labs and research facilities will help in retaining the brightest young minds in India, and will attract Overseas Citizens of India back to Indian universities which will convert brain drain to brain gain.

He highlighted that project based funding brings greater discipline in selection and execution of projects. There will be no burden on the new institutions as the government will take the entire burden of servicing the loans and there will be no increase in student fees on account of this project.

The objectives of RISE by 2022 included

• Qualitatively upgrade the research and academic infrastructure in India to global best standards by 2022.
• Make India into an education hub by making available high quality research infrastructure in Indian higher educational institutions.
• To allow access of HEFA funding to institutions like Central Universities, AIIMS, IISERs and newly created Institutes of National Importance, without creating any additional burden to the students.
• To bring greater accountability and speed in execution of infrastructure projects and avoid all cost/time over-runs, moving from the block-grant mode to project-mode for all infrastructure projects.
• To cater to the requirements of the Kendriya Vidyalayas and Navodaya Vidyalayas, and medical institutions like AIIMSs in a faster time frame.

HEFA has been set up on 31st May 2017 by the Central Government as a non-profit, Non Banking Financing Company (NBFC) for mobilising extra-budgetary resources for building crucial infrastructure in the higher educational institutions under Central Government.