WEDNESDAY, 12 OCTOBER – Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) Vice-Chancellor, Professor Datuk Dr. Mohd Harun Abdullah made a suggestion to have the university’s financial management team focus on expenses that gave impact to the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) of the university.

He said, with the unstable economic situation of the country, UMS should be ready with the possibility of budget cuts or restrictions on warrants made even though the Ministry of Higher Education had promised a ceiling grant allocation of RM323 million to UMS.

“UMS Expenditure for 2016 approved in the Board of Directors (BOD)  Meeting was RM415 million.

“The Ministry of Education Malaysia (MoE) only approved grants totaling RM315.9 million, of which about 11% equivalent to RM39.7 million were cut.

“This means, for the year 2016 we have used RM99 million of internal resources comprised mainly from tuition fees, to cater to our expenditure.

“Thus, the university’s management should gear towards helping to improve the quality of teaching and learning (P&P) including publications and research, and expenses that are not related and are not contributing to the university’s excellence especially at faculties should be reduced,” he said.

He said this in his opening speech at the UMS Expense Management Workshop 2017 delivered by the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic and International) UMS, Prof. Dr. D Kamarudin D Mudin at the Galeri, this morning.

He added that UMS emphasised on value for money and prudent spending as stipulated in the Treasury Circular No. 3.2/2014 Guidelines on Prudent Spending in Controlling Public Expenses.

“We have seen positive results from the austerity measures undertaken since 2014.

“We now need to move to a new phase, to emphasise on revenue generation through enhancing income generation at JFPIU level and achieving new income generation methods such as expanding alumni activities, wakaf and endowment, as well as industry collaboration towards financial sustainability,” he said.

Acting Bursar, Zallifah Shadan also presented a briefing on the performances of each department, and suggestions on covering future deficits.

More than 30 staff comprising heads of departments and their officers attended the workshop that ends tomorrow. – (fl)

Photo: Suzeanywati Gasinin