Budget 2019: Centre allocates Rs 93,847.64 crore for education sector

While Rs 37,461.01 crore has been allocated for higher education, Rs 56,386.63 crore has been earmarked for school education

education bugdet, budget highlights, union budget 2019, scientists on budget, budget speech, budget website — While Rs 37,461.01 crore has been allocated for higher education, Rs 56,386.63 crore has been earmarked for school education. Image source: gettyimages.in

The Centre Friday earmarked Rs 93,847.64 crore for the education sector for 2019-20, an increase of over 10 per cent from the last budgetary allocation. Last year, then finance minister Arun Jaitley had allocated Rs 85,010 crore for the education sector. While Rs 37,461.01 crore has been allocated for higher education, Rs 56,386.63 crore has been earmarked for school education.

The government has made available more than Rs 17,000 crore using the Higher Education Financing Agency (HEFA) funding mechanism, the HRD ministry said. It is anticipated that another Rs 14,000 crore will be made available in the coming year through this window. The overall fund availability for the higher education sector for 2019-20 would therefore be Rs 69,193.68 crore. Hence, the fund availability for 2019-20 is almost double as compared to the previous year, the ministry added.

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The government has provided an additional equity of Rs 2,100 crore to HEFA to enable it to mobilise the required funds for building high-quality infrastructure in higher education institutes. The IITs have been allocated Rs 6,223 crore. Apart from this, projects valued at Rs 12,028 crore have been sanctioned from HEFA for the IITs.

“Taking these into account, the fund availability for the IITs has more than doubled for 2019-20 as compared to the previous year. The central universities have been provided Rs 6,484 crore. The UGC has been allocated another Rs 4900 crore,” the ministry said. For research programmes such as IMPRESS, Rs 130 crore has been allotted, marking an increase of 37 per cent from last year. The budgetary allocation for the Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA) has also been increased from Rs 1,400 crore to Rs 2,100 crore.

The Unnat Bharat Abhiyan, under which 10,000 villages have been adopted by the higher education institutions, has got 70 per cent increase in budgetary allocation, the HRD ministry said. In his Budget speech, Goyal announced that allocation for the National Education Mission is being increased from Rs 32,334 crore in 2018-19 to Rs 38,572 crore in 2019-20.