Amid a dwindling corpus and lack of proper financial support, board members of the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad are set to meet on Saturday at the campus to discuss fee, among other things. The board, according to sources, may see hike in fee this year.

"The board meeting will take place on Saturday. It is very likely that the board may hike the fee this year as well," said a source close to the development.

In spite of effecting a fee hike by 200 per cent, IIM-A is now running at a deficit of Rs 7-8 crore (Rs 70-80 million), against a corpus of Rs 170 crore (Rs 1.7 billion) in 2001. The institute had asked for a fund of Rs 54 crore (Rs 540 million) from the government of which only Rs 2 crore (Rs 20 million) has been disbursed so far. Last year, IIM-A hiked fee for its flagship post graduate programme course by 200 per cent from Rs 5,50,000 to Rs 11 lakhs (Rs 1.1 million).

Due to a graded fee structure, close to 80 per cent students benefited through fee waivers, while the institute paid 30 per cent from its own coffers.

Several fee waivers led to students paying an average fee of Rs 3,98,000 per annum. Add to that, IIM-A will also bear an additional burden of Rs 7-8 crore (Rs 70-80 million) since it has to pay retirement benefits and arrears from 2006.