Finances are healthy at the Hong Kong Institute of Education despite the need to dip slightly into its reserves following the economic downturn, its president says.
The impact of the financial crisis had been 'minimal' and would not affect the institute's development in the 2009-12 funding period, Professor Anthony Cheung Bing-leung said at its spring media reception yesterday.
'We are dipping into part of the reserves with the support of the institute's council to uplift the overall academic capacity of the institution and implement some strategic directions,' he said.
Cheung stressed that the institute's investment strategy was prudent - it was only using a portion of the reserves and some of the spending would be 'front-loading' finance for new programmes and initiatives that would become self-financing.
'The overall strategy remains that in the medium term our budget will be a balanced one,' he said. 'At the same time we will develop new sources of funding. We have developed some programmes to raise funds and set up a new office.'
Initiatives in the pipeline include setting up an endowed chair professorship, recruiting six or seven new professors, and launching new undergraduate programmes for self-financing students.