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Thursday March 28, 2024

A journey for economic pursuits

By Imtiaz Alam
May 14, 2017

From Prime Minister’s Plane: Mood in the plane was quite relaxed, upbeat and frank after the settlement of Dawn story. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, his six ministers and chief ministers of four provinces are carrying their briefs to share with their Chinese counterparts in the hope of signing some more MoUs and setting the ball rolling on MTR-1 and four deals about two grants and two financial agreements, besides ensuring partnership to construct Bhasha dam and further exploring the partnership in six areas. 

Prime Minister has a very busy schedule before and during the “One Belt, One Road” Summit that is to bring together over 30 nations in Beijing. He looked very relaxed and confident. When I asked him about what he felt about the leaks, he laughed it away and read a famous Urdu couplet depicting his troubled tenure:  Umar e daraz maang kar laye they char din; Do aarzoo mein kat gaye, do intezar mein.  Mr Sharif is to address the High Level Dialogue during “One Belt, One Road Summit” and will make two other speeches during this visit, besides meeting various heads of state and government. There will be six special consultative sessions and the concerned ministers were found reading their presentations.   

It was not an idle flying for the prime minister and his team and they slipped to the tail end of the plane and spent over two hours discussing the business of the trip. Prime Minister, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, Advisor on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz, Minister for Planning Ahsan Iqbal, Minister for Railways Saad Rafiq and Principal Secretary Fawad Hassan Fawad continued their deliberations till lunch. Various officials were seen to be preoccupied with their respective presentations for six different consultative sessions.  

Principal Secretary to PM, Fawad Hassan Fawad, was quite forthcoming in sharing the information about the visit. He told me that starting work on Bhasha dam was a priority and the government has already spent almost a billion dollars on acquiring the land and it will offer it as equity for the financing of the largest water and power project in our history. The equity will be further enhanced when Pakistan will spend around 3 billion dollars on the project. Most hopeful was Minister for Railways Saad Rafiq and DG Frontier Works Organization Lt-Gen Afzal about the framework agreement costing over $ 8 billion for the renovation and reconstruction of Karachi to Peshawar Railway route that will include doubling of the track from Lahore to Peshawar. Saad Rafiq was quite sanguine about his most cherished project and said that it would double the speed from 80 kilometer to 160 kilometer an hour and travel time from Karachi to Lahore would be reduced to 11 hours. He, however, insisted that he would do his best to keep the rate of interest on loan below 1.75 per cent, whereas Mr Fawad claimed that interest rates have averaged 2.3 per cent on loans so far contracted with China by this government, which is quite cheaper.    

M. Ishaq Dar told me that the government is allowing operation of China’s state bank in Pakistan to facilitate investment and trade. He said that he will be signing two grants and two loans agreement with his Chinese counterparts on this visit. He, however, did not reveal the exact amount. Most positive aspect of this visit to China is that all the four chief ministers are on board and are interacting among themselves as if there was no estrangement among the political competitors. Mian Shehbaz Sharif was quite quiet. I tried to provoke him that there must be something up his sleeves, but he avoided to admit that he has perhaps another Metro project for Lahore, this time thankfully underground, on his development plate. Chief Minister of Sindh Murad Ali Shah was also hopeful to push forward much delayed Karachi Circular Road project. Even Chief Minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa appeared more relaxed than he usually is and has quite substantial project proposals to attract Chinese investors’ eyes. Chief Minister of Baluchistan is happy that some 11 projects are on line and he mentioned the Gwardar Expressway and airport, besides other schemes. 

Knowing well the provincial sensibilities, Chinese officials seem to be quite responsive to the palpable project proposals being floated by the provinces. Even though, the CPEC is being celebrated as a game-changer, the rail link between Kashghar and Gwadar and the gas pipeline projects are not at even brain-storming stage. However FWO chief Lt-Gen Afzal, a remarkable man, confided to me and with over confidence that it is financially viable and he has developed its blueprint. Even though some sections of the road have been constructed, it would become the real economic route when gas pipeline and rail links are built from Kashghar to Gwardar. He favoured linking Chah Bahar with Gwadar and completing gas pipeline from Iran and taking it further to China. When I expressed my reservation over the huge trade deficit of $ 10 billion in our preferential free trade with China, Minister of Commerce Khurram Dastgir told me that it still covered only 60 per cent of the trading goods and the Chinese may agree to provide us greater space in their market if we extend the free trade agreement to over 90 per cent of goods that we trade.  Despite continuing political fighting back home, the journey to China is worth undertaking if we have done our homework well in the interest of our own industrialization and development.