Sri Vijaya Puram, Oct. 10: Recognizing the paramount importance of safety, economy, speed and the efficiency in extraction of mineral resources and in its convergence into viable economic alloys and metals, National Mineral Policy has accorded higher priority to Research and Development (R&D) programme and the Ministry of Mine, Govt. of India has been funding research through grant-in-aid projects to many research institutions in different areas under the broad ambit of its S &T programme.