New Delhi, Jul 6 (IANS): Union Human Resource Development Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal 'Nishank' on Friday expressed his gratitude to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman for giving priority to education sector. He said that the aspirations of all stakeholders in education sector would be met by this budget.

He expressed his happiness over the increased allocation of Rs 9,843.64 crore to the education sector from last year. Total allocation for the education sector has been increased from Rs 85,010 crore in 2018-19 to 94,853.64 crore in 2019-20.

Apart from this, the government has made available Rs 15,000 crore through extra-budgetary resources using the Higher Education Financing Agency (HEFA) mechanism. It has provided an additional equity of Rs 2,100 crore to the HEFA to enable it to mobilise the required funds for building high quality infrastructure in higher educational institutions.

The Minister also lauded the creation of the National Research Foundation (NRF), which, he said, would play a key role in coordinating the research of all the ministries.

At Rs 38,317 crore, the allocation for higher education has witnessed an increase of 9.4 per cent compared to the last financial year. Apart from this, there has been an overall increase of Rs 6422.88 crore (12.81 per cent) in the budget allocation of Department of School Education and Literacy this year.

An amount of Rs 400 crore has been provided to create ‘world class institutions'in the field of education which is more than three times the revised estimates for the previous year.