ISLAMABAD, Feb 18: The government has decided to provide incentives and financial and physical infrastructure to help the country’s engineering industry strengthen its technology and increase exports from the sector, Higher Education Commission Chairman Dr Attaur Rehman told Dawn on Thursday.

“The president and the prime minister have agreed to provide Rs90 billion to set up six engineering universities,” he said.

He said a technology-based ‘Industrial vision and strategy for Pakistan’s socioeconomic development’ had been prepared by the HEC and Pakistan Institute of Development Economics.

The engineering industry, he said, constituted one of the fastest growing economic sectors in the world and its share in trade had increased from 55 per cent in 1990 to 63 per cent in 2002. “However, in Pakistan its contribution to exports has remained negligible,” he said.

The study submitted to the government, Dr Rehman said, called for identifying specific sectors in which Pakistan should invest so that it could achieve a high growth target and achieve rapid development.

It covered major productive sectors of the economy — agriculture, industry and services –- and there was focus on engineering goods, textiles, leather, materials, chemicals process industries, pharmaceuticals, electronics, energy, telecommunication, information technology, construction and housing as well as transport sector, he said.

“In order to achieve rapid growth in each sector, we need to substantially strengthen research and development efforts and create the necessary human resources which can face the challenges of globalization and international competition,” the HEC chairman said.

Responding to a question, Dr Rehman said the six universities would be set up in 10 years and their PC-1 was being finalized for approval by the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (Ecnec).

“For these universities, heads of the departments will be hired from France, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, Austria, Japan and Korea,” the HEC chairman said. He said modern system of education from abroad would be introduced in the universities.

He said that of the 10,000 teachers in the country’s universities, only 3,000 possessed PhD degrees.

“The effort is to also provide access to higher education, which is just 3.7 per cent, compared to 17 to 23 per cent in other countries,” he said.

“We are putting pressure to get universities and degree-awarding institutions with inadequate facilities closed,” the HEC chief said. By February 2007, a number of such institutions would be closed, he said, adding: “In fact, these are not universities but glorified colleges.”

In reply to a question, he said that out of 12,000 applicants, about 400 students had been short listed to be sent abroad for higher education. A German team recently interviewed some students for higher education in Germany, for which the HEC would bear the expenses.

Every year, 500 students were being sent abroad for higher education, for which a $150 million programme had been started with the support of Fulbright Scholarship. The government had agreed to stretch higher education budget to one per cent of the gross national product by providing 50 per cent increase annually, he said.