Islamabad: The Economic Coordination Committee of the Cabinet has approved several Technical Supplementary Grants to meet the cost of ongoing projects and initiatives from different ministries and divisions during the current financial year.
According to Radio Pakistan, the ECC, which met in Islamabad on Friday with Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb in the chair, approved 15.839 billion rupees for the Ministry of Defence, and 63 million rupees for the Finance Division. The committee also assented to 829.67 billion rupees and 1,774.20 billion rupees for the Finance Division for the repayment of domestic debt and for foreign loan repayments, respectively.
One hundred million rupees technical supplementary grant was approved for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1.765 billion rupees for the Interior Ministry, and 5.5 billion rupees for Strategic Plans Divisions. Additionally, the forum allowed a grant of 300 million rupees to clear outstanding liabilities under various Heads of Account of the Islamabad Capital Police, 100 million rupees to clear the outstanding liabilities of various vendors who provided services and supplies during the law and order situations in the ICT region, and 52.241 million rupees for the up-gradation of the latest investigation equipment and friendly environment at ICT Police stations.
The ECC also approved a technical supplementary grant of 100 million rupees in respect of Frontier Corps KP (North), 117.97 million rupees for the Petroleum Division, 254.57 million rupees for onward release to the Government of Balochistan in terms of an incentive package for administrative and police officers posted under it, and 198 million rupees for repair and maintenance of the Executive Building, Islamabad.
Besides, the ECC decided to maintain gas prices to protect household consumers with only fixed charges re-adjusted in the domestic sector to recover the asset costs. It also allowed the price of gas for bulk consumers, power plants operating on natural gas, and industry to be increased by an average value of around 10 percent.
The Cabinet body also accorded in-principle approval to launching a risk coverage scheme for small farmers and underserved areas with instructions for further fine-tuning and incorporating additional safeguards before its planned launch on 14th August this year. The ECC was told that the scheme would likely bring 750,000 new agricultural borrowers into the formal financial system and generate an incremental credit portfolio of 300 billion rupees during its disbursement tenure of three years from fiscal year 2026-28. The budgetary requirement for meeting risk coverage and operational cost of the banks is estimated to be 37.5 billion rupees, spread over Fiscal Year 27 to Fiscal Year 31.