By TwoCircles.net staff reporter
New Delhi: Dr. Rawiya Bint Saud Al Busaidiya, Minister of Higher Education, Sultanate of Oman, who is on an official visit to India, called on Union Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Arjun Singh on 27th March in New Delhi.
Dr. Busaidiya is visiting India on the invitation of Arjun Singh. She is being accompanied by Saud Mohammed Al-Timaml, Minister’s Advisor for IC, Dr. Bakheet Ahmed Al-Mahri, Dean, University of Salalah, Hamad Bin Hamood Al Balushi, Director of the Department of Foreign Scholarship and Mr. Yasser Al-Harthi, Official in the Minister’s office.
Dr. Bysauidiya and Arjun Singh had a very cordial meeting. The Omani Minister thanked Arjun Singh for the invitation extended to her. She told the minister that her visit was very fruitful. During the last two days, she visited a number of institutions like UGC, Delhi University, NCERT, NUEPA and Jamia Millia Islamia. She was impressed by the quality of academic facilities available in the Indian institutions.
An MoU between the Indian Ministry of Human Resource Development and the Ministry of Higher Education, Sultanate of Oman, was signed in December 2007. The MoU provides for cooperation between the two countries in the field of higher education through exchange visits of academic professionals in order to build understanding of each other’s expertise and achievements. Both ministers expressed their keen desire to move forward and finalize some specific programmes under the framework of the MoU.
The Omani minister informed that Oman already had a number of agreements with Indian institutions, particularly in the field of medicine, agriculture and marine science. They would like to further increase the number of such agreements with other Indian institutions. Areas of interest would be engineering, medicine science.
Shri R.P. Agrawal, Secretary (HE), who was present in the meeting, apprised the Omani delegation that in the next Five Year Plan, Higher Education is to be given a lot of boost. Its budget will be increased 9 to 10 fold and a large number of Central Universities, IITs, IIMs and other colleges and polytechnics will be opened during the period.
The Omani delegation is scheduled to visit IIM, Ahmedabad and National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad on 28th March 2008.