Early completion of CPEC’s western route top priority: NHA

Islamabad: The participants of Inland Study Tour of National Management Course visited the NHA head-office on Friday where they were given a detailed briefing about the organization, its working and a detailed overview of development projects currently under construction in various parts of the country.

Welcoming the guests, National Highway Authority (NHA) Chairman Shahid Ashraf Tarar dilated upon the profile of the organization regarding construction, development and maintenance of national highways, motorways, expressways and strategic roads in Pakistan.

He informed the guests that while roads under the NHA constituted only 4 pc of the country’s entire networkk, they carried 80 percent of commercial and 65 per cent of cargo traffic load. He said development projects worth over Rs1,200 billion were presently under execution, including the all important China Pakistan Economic Corridor.

He said the early completion of CPEC’s western route was the organization’s top priority as it passed through the less privileged areas of the country. He said work on different sections of the western alignment had already started and hoped to complete the work by the end of 2018. He said for the first time in the country’s history, substantial private sector investment was encouraged towards highway schemes and projects worth over Rs340 billion were awarded on BOT (Built-Operate-Transfer), including the Karachi-Hyderabad Motorway (M-9) and Lahore-Sialkot Motorway.

The NHA chairman informed about the various measures the authority had adopted to ensure greater transparency in the procurement process which resulted in saving of billions of rupees to the national exchequer. The briefing was followed by a question-answer session.

Dean of National School of Public Policy Naeem Aslam in his remarks appreciated the NHA’s role as pioneer organisation in building international quality highways and motorways in Pakistan and lauded the improved standards of transparency and efficiency in the development of road infrastructure schemes.