Sean Nero

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai will take a Sup­ple­men­tary Ap­pro­pri­a­tions Bill be­fore Par­lia­ment next Fri­day seek­ing a fur­ther $1 bil­lion dol­lars to the 2012-2013 bud­get, Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Fazal Karim has said."Min­is­ter Howai will ask for ad­di­tion­al sums of mon­ey with re­spect to the Min­istry of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing and with re­spect to oth­er min­istries look­ing at ex­pen­di­ture of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1 bil­lion," he said.

The min­istry is seek­ing more than $50 mil­lion added to its cur­rent al­lo­ca­tion.Karim said his min­istry's re­quest will be for a new tech­nol­o­gy cen­tre at Pe­nal, Debe, ($27 mil­lion); the On-the-Job Train­ing (OJT) Pro­gramme ($20 mil­lion); and ex­pan­sion of the Au­to­mo­tive Tech­nol­o­gy Cen­tre at Ch­agua­nas, com­pris­ing Na­tion­al En­er­gy Skills Cen­tre (NESC), the Youth Train­ing and Part­ner­ship Pro­gramme (Ytepp) and Met­al In­dus­tries Com­pa­ny (MIC).

"We have asked for an ad­di­tion­al sum to fi­nance the Mul­ti-sec­tor Skills Train­ing (MUST) Pro­gramme," Karim said.