Taken for grants

Last week, Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan arrived in Pakistan among much fanfare: new projects, inaugurations, agreements, promises to strengthen Pak-China relations and more.

The Pakistani Foreign Office stated that the three-day visit of Qishan set "an increased momentum" that had been put in motion from the time PM Imran Khan attended the Second Belt and Road Forum in Beijing in April 2019, and even before that in his visit to China in November 2018 where he met Chinese President Xi Jinping to seek Chinese assistance in tackling Pakistan’s financial crisis. Last week, the two sides held in depth discussions on Phase-II of China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), including industrial and agricultural cooperation and socio-economic development, as well as on the deepening of practical cooperation in tourism and people-to-people exchanges.

Under the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) inked on socio-economic development during the PM’s visit to Beijing in April, projects on agriculture, education, healthcare, water resources, vocational training and poverty alleviation will be executed in the near future.

Minister for Planning, Development and Reforms Makhdoom Khusro Bakhtiar said the PTI government urged the Chinese government to provide a grant for Pakistan’s socio-economic development and agricultural boost. "Unlike the previous government, we convinced China to allocate this generous grant for socio-economic development in Pakistan".

According to the Planning and Development Commission officials, the projects to be executed under the first phase of CPEC Socio-Economic Development Cooperation have been shortlisted. CPEC project director Hassan Daud Butt says there are 27 projects which have been identified for this $1billion grant promised by the Chinese government during the PM’s November visit to Beijing. "17 of them are being commenced on fast track basis."

He adds, "This grant will be dispersed in three years in different phases. The focus will be on building hospitals, burn centres and vocational training centres."

The overall grant also includes 20,000 scholarships for Pakistani youth in Chinese schools; 50 schools will be built in Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) and 100 smart schools and smart labs that will fall under the Higher Education Commission. It’ll also focus on projects to boost agriculture, mainly cotton, rice, palm and dates, as well as focus on access to clean water. Solar lighting equipment and desalination plant (with the capacity of desalinating 5,000 tonnes per day) will be set up in Balochistan. "These fast track projects will be completed in a year," he says, adding that the focus will be on Balochistan, south Punjab, tribal areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and northern Sindh, the less-developed areas of the country."

All of them are small projects worth Rs100 million to Rs300 million, the official says. "The scope of cooperation under the socio-economic development grant will be for the implementation of high-impact projects on need-based areas."

Senior economist Dr Kaiser Bengali does not buy the idea of bringing in foreign money for socio-economic development. He questions the selection criterion, implementation and transparency in completing such projects. "Personally, I think we do not need to beg other countries for socio-economic development in our own country. This is our mandate and we can do it better."

He adds that the details of these projects have not not shared with the media or the public. "The issue is with implementation and transparency in completing these projects and making them merit-based".