ECC asks about placement of trained agri-experts

Committee wants to gauge impact of training imparted to 885 experts in China

ISLAMABAD:

Pakistan's economic managers have raised questions about the placement of agricultural professionals trained in China and has directed the food ministry to share their status.

The Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the cabinet told the food ministry to disclose the placement status of 885 agricultural professionals following completion of their training.

During discussions in a recent meeting, the ECC, while responding to a query from the minister for power about the placement of 885 trained agricultural professionals, asked the Ministry of National Food Security and Research and the Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training to share their placement status with the committee to gauge the impact of training.

The Ministry of Education briefed the ECC that the prime minister during his visit to China in June 2024 had said that 1,000 Pakistani agricultural professionals be trained in China to benefit from its expertise in agricultural technology, innovation and research. Accordingly, the Ministry of Food Security developed a training framework, while the Higher Education Commission (HEC) was entrusted with the logistical and financial management of the programme.

The Ministry of Education recalled that the ECC, in its meeting held on November 28, 2024, had approved a technical supplementary grant of Rs3,072 million for implementation of the programme in batches. Of the total, Rs1,950 million was released during fiscal year 2024-25. HEC arranged training of 292 professionals under batch-I, however, batch-II training could not be undertaken within the stipulated timeframe and consequently, Rs1,406 million remained unutilised, while the unutilised balance of Rs544 million was surrendered.

The Ministry of Federal Education apprised the ECC that during FY2025-26 HEC placed a further 593 trainees in two batches, bringing the total number of trained agricultural professionals to 885. The remaining 115 trainees, having Sindh domicile, have met the prescribed requirements and have been registered at the Northwest Agricultural & Forestry University, Xi'an, China. Their departure under Cohort-I, batch-III was scheduled for the last week of September 2026, thereby completing the target of 1,000 trainees.

The Ministry of Education added that to ensure continuity of the programme, a meeting was held with the Finance Division on August 8, 2025, wherein it was agreed in principle that the immediate requirement of Rs1,666 million would be met from HEC's FY2025-26 allocation under the "Promotion of Research" programme and the amount would be recovered through a supplementary grant during the third quarter of FY2025-26. However, the committed grant could not be released during FY26.

Meanwhile, the HEC incurred expenses of Rs897.187 million through internal re-appropriation from its own resources. The Ministry of Education told the meeting that timely release of required funds was essential to ensure the uninterrupted implementation and successful completion of the initiative as well as to recover the released amount, ie, Rs897.187 million, by the commission to safeguard the continuity of the national research ecosystem and meet HEC's committed national and international obligations. The ECC considered a summary dated September 16, 2026, submitted by the Ministry of Federal Education and titled "Technical Supplementary Grant of Rs1,666.176 million for the Prime Minister's Initiative on Short Term Training of three to six months for 1,000 Agricultural Professionals in China", and approved the proposal.