LAHORE: Higher Education Commission (HEC), Pakistan, under Higher Education Development in Pakistan (HEDP) project, conducted two extensive capacity-building workshops for public sector universities on financial autonomy in Lahore and Karachi.

Over 45 senior finance officials, including treasurers and registrars fromvarious public sector higher education institutions (HEIs) attended the workshops.

HEDP has already trained more than 100 participants from differentinstitutionsin thelast three years.

The workshop in Lahore was attended by around 25 registrars of public sector universities and their staff from across the country, including federal capital, Azad Jammu & Kashmir, Sindh, Punjab andKhyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The key thematic areas of the training included the features of the framework for financial autonomy, better financial management, improvement in the governance of public sector universities, and practicalillustrationsforimplementation of the framework.

The allocation of public funds for the highereducation sector in Pakistan remains low compared to interna-tional standards, owing to competing demands from other sectors.

The HEC is thus encouraging public sector higher education institutions to enhance the revenues from nontraditional sources. It is also one of the key development objectives of the HEDP project, where the governance of the higher education sector is to be strengthened by support-ing the financial autonomy of universities.

After consultations with around 100 institutions across Pakistan, a framework for revenue enhancement and fund generation for public sector universities was developed.

In the collective brainstorming, the programme members suggested automating the processes in the universities and theavailability of dashboards for the vice chancellors and other administrative members to review the financial status online.

The training is led by HEDP Financial Management Specialist Mr Khawaja Zahid, in collaboration with the financial experts who were engaged to conduct different sessions during the workshop.