SIFC umbrella: Pakistan expects $27bn for projects over five years, says Ahsan

ISLAMABAD: The Minister for Planning and Development, Ahsan Iqbal, said on Thursday that Pakistan had shared lists of projects among bilateral friends for receiving an investment of $27 billion under the Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC) umbrella.

The SIFC, jointly run by military and civilian top guns, is preparing feasibility studies and shared projects over the commitment of $5 billion portfolio investment from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, $10 billion from the UAE, $10 billion from Kuwait and $2 billion from Azerbaijan. “This commitment of $27 billion will be materialised in five years exactly on the pattern of China Pakistan Economic Corridor where the Chinese side showed its commitment, then followed with materialisation of projects from 2013-18,” Federal Minister for Planning Ahsan Iqbal said while talking to journalists here at the P-Block (Ministry of Planning) on Thursday.

The minister said the civilian and military leadership was moving in a unified way under the ambit of SIFC to overcome instability, uncertainty and lack of confidence with the hope and optimism that there would be no U-turn on economic policies. There will be an element of evolution for increasing the space for civilians on the pattern of Turkey as surgical operation never helped in achieving desired results, he added.

A Saudi investment delegation is expected to visit Pakistan for materializing Memorandum of Understanding (MoUs) for different sectors of the economy next month, he said.

The Chinese premier, he said, would be visiting Islamabad for attending the SCO Summit but his one-day visit would focus on bilateral issues, including moving towards finalising arrangement for much-awaited Mainline (ML-1) from Peshawar to Karachi. But it would be done in a phased manner keeping in view the restraints from the IMF. There is no free slate available to Islamabad, he added.

The minister said that CPEC-II would get momentum as Chinese premier would be visiting Pakistan after 11 years and it was hoped that the progress would be achieved towards financing agreement of much-awaited ML-1 projects but it would be constructed in a phased manner keeping in view the conditionalities attached to the IMF program.

On Chinese IPPs projects, he said that the capacity repayments became a complex issue because the power requirements stood at 28,000 megawatts for summer season but shrank to just 12,000 MW during the winter season. If the installed capacity would not have increased, then people would have to pass through torturous loadshedding during the summer season. If there would be no loadshedding, then there would be capacity repayments. So there was a ctach-22 situation for the government.

He said that there were projections of the World Bank and Asian Development Bank about Pakistan’s GDP growth projection of 6 percent from 2018 to 2023 but the economy had to face crash landing when an inexperienced team took over the reins of power in 2018-2022.

The minister said that Pakistan would have to focus on increasing exports, remittances and attracting investment to come out of the economic crisis.

When asked about hiring of staff for National Economic Transformation Unit (NETO) of the Planning Commission, the minister said that all hiring would be done in a transparent manner and on merit on contractual basis. He said a selection committee would appoint VC PIDE purely on merit.