‘Government striving to make Pakistan economically strong’

FAISALABAD: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will visit Faisalabad or invite business community of Faisalabad to Islamabad to personally hear and redress their genuine reservations and practical bottlenecks hampering the implementation on Vision 2025, said Prof Ahsan Iqbal, Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Reforms.
He was addressing the members of the Faisalabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry here on Friday. The minister gave an overview of the Vision 2025 and said that he would meet the PM next week to brief him about the problems being faced by business community of Pakistan. He said that the government was striving to make Pakistan economically strong and in this connection business community should also cooperate with the government. “Chinese investment would play a positive role in convincing other countries to come forward and invest in Pakistan”, he added. He termed energy crisis as one the major bottlenecks in achieving various objectives. He said that we were facing shortfall of 5000MW electricity and we had to make efforts to generate surplus electricity for bright future. He said that under the CPEC (China Pakistan Economic Corridor), energy projects of 10,400MW had been proposed while 1600MW would be generated through hydel resource while 5200 coal based projects had also been proposed. Similarly, he added, power projects of wind and solar would also be installed. He said that 1000MW solar energy park near Bahawalpur would be the biggest park of the world. He said that the Karachi-Multan and the Multan-Lahore sections would be completed during the next three years. He said that under the Vision 2025, we had viable plans to increase our $25 billion exports to $150 billion. He claimed that energy crisis would be resolved within next two to three years. Earlier, FCCI president Rizwan Ashraf lauded the achievements of the government on economic front and said that we should adopt a consensus Energy Act to ensure completion of the long term energy projects. FPCCI president Mian Idrees, Rana Muhammad Afzal, Mian Abdul Mannan, Najma Afzal, Muzammil Sultan, Mian Latif, Azhar Majeed, Mian Naeem and FCCI SVP Nadeem Allahwala also spoke. Earlier, the minister also inaugurated a solar plant at the FCCI.