Sir: The executive director of Higher Education Commission (HEC) Dr Arshad has urged the universities to benefit from various HEC initiatives like Technology Development Fund, National Research Programme for Universities and University-Industry Technology Support Programme and underlined the significance of university-industry linkages. He also stressed on the need for planned collaboration among both the sectors. The businessmen and industrialists stated that they can make arrangements to train and provide internship opportunities to the university students and final year students may be sent to the industry for training. However, in Balochistan around 13 different minerals are being extracted and all of them are exported in raw form without domestic processing and extracting a mineral and exporting it in raw form requires 80 per cent investment and the profit is only 20 per cent whereas transforming a raw mineral into a finished product requires 20 per cent investment and profit is 80 per cent. We should focus on processing the raw material domestically to achieve maximum gains out of it. Balochistan has precious stones and this industry needs to be flourished with the help of universities. BABA FAIZ Turbat