Pakistan would soon have rapid positive changes in the field of Science and Technology (S&T) as the present government is committed and fully supporting the policies for the uplift of this sector.
The country is heading towards right direction in the field of S&T and the government is allocating sufficient budget for the promotion to update scientific education in the country.
This was stated by Federal Minister In-charge, Ministry of Science and Technology, Professor Atta-ur-Rehman while speaking in a PTV programme on Thursday.
He said, Inter-Academy Panel has recently formed a network among the OIC member countries for capacity building in the field of Science and Technology. Elaborating the network he said, it is network of academies of sciences of OIC countries, adding these academies consist on the body of best scientists and engineers of the respective countries.
Dr Atta-ur-Rehman has been unanimously elected as the first president of the network.
Atta said the network has been formed to share each other's experience in the field of S&T, in which the countries are strong and specialised.
Giving examples of expertise of different countries, he said, Kazkhistan is strong in space sciences while Turkey in engineering sciences, Malaysia is strong in Information and Biotechnology as well as Pakistan is experienced in Agriculture Biotechnology, Chemistry and Physics.
He added that through the Network of Academies of Science in Countries of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (NASIC), the academies would share each others' strength in their respective fields.
He said along with the other many activities, the member countries would exchange different programmes to train scientists and engineers.
Dr Atta who is also the Co-ordinator General Comstech said, Ministers for Science and Technology of OIC for the Comstech would support the NASIC programme.
He added that the headquarters of the network would remain in Pakistan for three years.
While comparing the Islamic world with others he said, there were only about 550 universities throughout the Islamic world and there was more than one thousand universities only in Japan.
He said according to the recent published world-wide rating of universities, only two Islamic universities fall in top 500 universities. These two universities come after the number of 350, he regretted.
He said Islamic world is publishing about I percent scientific literature of the total while only few advanced western countries are publishing about 95 percent and 3 to 4 percent is being produced by other western countries.
He expressed concern that resourceful Arab countries are incurring 7 percent of their GDP on defence while only 0.2 percent on science and research.
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