What is the Research Endowment Fund (REF)? How does the Fund work?
-
In the 2008-09 Budget Speech, the Financial Secretary
announced that the Government would set up an HK$18 billion
Research Endowment Fund (REF) to support research at the
UGC-funded institutions.
-
The REF was established in 2009 to provide a steady flow of
research funding for the institutions. The UGC is
responsible for advising on the policies governing the
operation, development and investment of the Fund. Out of
the HK$18 billion, the investment income of at least HK$14
billion will be used to replace, from the 2010/11 academic
year onwards, the bulk of the existing earmarked research
grants distributed annually to the RGC, thus providing
greater funding stability and certainty of funding to
support institutions' research projects.
-
In addition, the investment income from up to HK$4 billion
of the REF will be deployed to support theme-based research,
thus allowing the institutions to work on research proposals
on themes of a longer-term nature and strategically
beneficial to the development of Hong Kong.
-
The REF was topped up by HK$5 billion in 2013/14. Investment
income of HK$2 billion is used to replace the government
recurrent subvention and investment income of HK$3 billion
is used for providing competitive research funding for the
local self-financing degree-awarding institutions.
-
In addition, an injection of HK$3 billion was made in
2017/18 to provide non-means tested tuition waiver for all
local students enrolled in UGC funded research postgraduate
programmes.
- Pursuant to the acceptance of the recommendations made by the Task Force on Review of Research Policy and Funding, the Government made an injection of HK$20 billion to REF in September 2019, increasing the size of REF to HK$46 billion. The investment income generated from the injection is used for (i) sustaining the level of research funding; (ii) providing funding for the Research Impact Fund launched by the RGC to render continued funding support for impactful research; and (iii) providing additional funding for the RGC to encourage cross-institutional / cross-disciplinary collaborations through its collaborative research funding schemes.