University of Malta trust fund still at ‘setting-up’ stage

Having been allocated €500,000 in last year’s budget, the University of Malta Trust Fund for Research and Innovation is not only still in its “initial stages”, but actually had its budget allocation cut down to €300,000.

Government’s position in the 2011 budget speech was that the University of Malta “is of strategic importance for the development of our country,” and that the government believed that this sector requires more investment – affirming that “capital as well as recurrent investment is required which is higher than the one we are allocating to it.”

Yet, a full year since the much-needed University Trust Fund was announced in 2010’s budget speech, the fund is still in its inception stages.

The Education Ministry confirms that “The Legal Notice 186/2010 enabling the setting up of the University Trust Fund was published earlier this year.” The ministry spokesperson also pointed out that the legal notice states that “the Trust shall receive any settlements and donations of any type and in any manner, whether inter vivos or causa mortis.”

While last year, €500,000 were allocated to the fund, the ministry declined to explain what projects, initiatives, innovations, or research the trust is funding, or whether it has received any settlements or donations – saying only that “the fund is in its initial stages and in the process of being set-up in accordance to the legal notice.”

It also declined to say why Trust Fund suffered a budget allocation cut of €200,000, or whether it was part of government’s fiscal cost-cutting consolidation.

The Trust Fund originally appeared in government’s 2008 budget document, which said that government was considering the fund in an effort to sustain the financial sustainability and autonomy of the UoM. Such a fund, the government said, would “encourage private or corporate bodies to donate funds to the university and, which are tax deductible in order to incentives this activity.

“In effect, Government becomes a co-investor with corporations and society at large to develop significant reserves for the University of Malta which in the long-run permit the University of Malta to embark on innovative research activity and further develop its activities beyond the reach of annual recurrent allocations from Government”.

A year later, in 2010’s budget, government allocated €500,000 to the fund – a move that was welcomed by university and student organisations alike as a small step in the right direction.

Prior to that as far as back as 2006, UoM Rector Prof. Juanito Camilleri had made repeated calls for the setting up of the fund, affirming that "It was high time that the university is allowed to set up a trust fund - with all the required monitoring and transparency - so that companies and alumni could contribute funds into it.”

Under the rector's proposal, students who do not need their stipend should be able to donate it to the Trust Fund, research and innovation and, in return for tax credits once they graduate.  "This would bring the University of Malta in line with universities in the USA, the UK and many other developed countries in the world," he had said.

The rector was joined in this call by the Student’s Council (KSU) who also repeatedly urged government to honour its pledge and set up the much-needed fund in an attempt to boost the insufficient funding that the university has to make do with.

“This mechanism would allow the University to engage itself in large-scale projects and improve the services it already offers, especially in an era where competition is increasing,” KSU had said back in 2008.