Minister for Planning, development and special initiatives Ahsan Iqbal on On Thursday, the incumbent said government fully supporting China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and commits to accelerate work on related projects.
He said when PML-N government signed $46 billion projects under CPEC back in 2013, no one in in world ready to attract investment in Pakistan because of the law and order situation.
Pakistan, he says, desperate for investment in energy and infrastructure. minister China has invested $29 billion in these sectors during the five years of tenure (2013-18) of PML-N government.
He said China also helped Pakistan use its strategic reserves such as Thar Coal, which currently produce thousands of MW of energy and contributes national grid.
Ahsan Iqbal pointed out out those 900 billion dollars worth of investment from developed world looking for opportunities business-friendly environment in developing countries. However, “investment can never come to a country where political chaos, polarization and policy appeal”, he added.
He said that annual foreign direct investment (FDI) in Vietnam is about 28-30 billion dollars, while in Pakistan in In 2020, it was only $1.2 billion.
“For 75 years of our history we never followed export growth policywhat reason we are behind behind and could not grow,” he said, adding that we are now, we need Annual jump of 5 to 10 billion dollar in export to ensure stable growth.
minister said CPEC is China’s strategic vision says it wants Pakistan to develop as an industrial economy. “Therefore, within the framework of CPEC, we strive to transform structure of Pakistan economy from small-scale agricultural economy to industrial economy based on on export growth,” he added.
He said under second phase of CPEC, we had a plan to develop nine special economic zones (SEZs) from 2020 to 2025.
In 2017, he said, envoys from the European Union (EU), Japan, the UK and others countries came to him, wanting to become a partner with KPEC. “CPEC has become a brand of Pakistan, but look what we have done,” he said. added.
At the same year he said a lot of Chinese companies plan to open up their offices in Pakistan and “I expected about 30-35 billion dollars of investment to come to Pakistan.” in next five years”.
But Ahsan Iqbal regretted it. in 2018 saw a violent regime change, resulting in in policy the U-turn that crushed the Chinese confidence as well as work on CPEC projects slowed down down.
