Swat Expressway to be completed by next March

KP CM says FWO, Chinese companies
to be invited to invest in tourism sector

NOWSHERA: Chief Minister Pervez Khattak has said that the under-construction Swat Expressway was the project of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government, which would be completed till March next year.

He was talking to reporters at the Karnel Sher Khan Interchange on Monday after a briefing by the Frontier Works Organisation (FWO) officials on the Swat Expressway.Pervez Khattak said that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa would contribute Rs11.5 billion to the Rs35 billion expressway project while the remaining amount would be invested by the FWO.

The chief minister said that the project would be completed till March next year. He said the KP government was consulting the FWO for extending the expressway to Mingora and hoped that an agreement to this effect would be signed soon.

Pervez Khattak said the KP government had identified 18 spots for promotion of tourism in the province, adding that FWO and Chinese companies would be invited to invest in the tourism sector.

The chief minister was informed the Swat Expressway project had been divided into five phases and work on all the phases had been started simultaneously.He was told that the Karnel Sher Khan-Katlang portion of the expressway would be opened for traffic by December while the entire 81 kilometer expressway would be completed by March 2018. Pervez Khattak said that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was the only province that had launched the expressway and Peshawar Rapid Bus project from own resources.