The “Federal National Council” in its (7th) session held on Tuesday (4/2/2014), in the presence of Sheikh “Hamdan Bin Mubarak Al Nahyan”, Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, recommended raising the government’s expenditure on scientific research in consistence with the common international trends, as it is considered the vehicle of progress and development in the State. It also advised to raise the Ministry’s allocations for the “National Research Foundation” to enable it to implement its strategies, plans, and projects.
The “Council”, chaired by his Excellency Dr. “Mohammed Ahmed Almurr”, discussed the policy of the “Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research” in the field of scientific research, and their recommendations included increasing budget allocations for universities to improve the infrastructure of research and development through supplying the laboratories of scientific research at universities with the necessary equipment and facilities. The “Council” also approved the recommendation to dissociate the “National Research Foundation” to make it an independent scientific, administrative, and logistics reference for research in order to control and organize the process of scientific research in the State. including the establishment of a fund to support the scientific research so that private institutions and companies in the State contribute to its funding, and to specify a certain budget from the government to support it, in addition to preparing and supervising an annual plan for scientific research to be implemented through programs, partnerships and agreements between the “National Research Foundation” and the universities, colleges, and research centers in the State.
The recommendations stressed on the importance of benefiting from international experiences in providing resources of alternative financing for scientific research, and uncovering new innovative methods to finance research, especially the experiences of European countries and the “USA”, and conducting studies to be followed by discussions with experts and specialists to reach specific results in this regard. In addition, it emphasized the need for allocating (5%) of the budget of each federal ministry for the payments of experts and consultants, to be deposited in the “National Research Foundation” in accordance with the budget of all federal ministries of the state, so as to help finance scientific research at the universities, and to make the federal ministries less dependent on experts and consultants.
