Only 2pc of 10,000 MoUs signed in two decades turned viable

ISLAMABAD: No one could deny from positive development about Saudi Arabia’s plan to sign various Memorandum of Understandings (MoUs) for conducting feasibility studies that might pave the way for materialising up to $15 billion investments but various ministries/divisions in Pakistan had signed around 10,000 MoUs in last two decades with hardly 2 percent turned into viable agreements.

Keeping in view this challenging situation, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have now decided to establish a high powered council to oversee projects on which both sides would show their interest during this upcoming visit of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman (MBS).

The MBS is scheduled to visit Pakistan tomorrow and both the countries are supposed to sign important MoUs during this occasion. It will depend upon the capability and capacity of the bureaucracy and rulers that how many of them turned into viable agreements and then execute it in transparent manner.

Finally it is yet to see how many of them completed successfully. Even in the government’s official files no one exactly knows that how many MoUs were exactly signed during last two decades. When one federal secretary was contacted for seeking his comments, he said that the ministries and divisions concerned were the custodians of these signed MoUs and no mechanism exist at centralised level to ascertain how many such memos had been signed.

Another official, however, said that significance of the Saudi crown prince visit could be gauged from the massive size of his delegation which was first of its kind in Pakistan. It also shows that both governments meant business and the MoUs would materialise into agreements, he added.

The official said that Saudi Arabia has already helped the sitting government overcome its fiscal crisis by extending assistance to the tune of billions of dollars. Once Ministry of Foreign Affairs was assigned to come up with exact number of signed MoUs with China few years back and at that time it had come into knowledge that Pakistan and China had signed around 350 MoU and some of them could not be traced fully.

“Sometimes the MoUs were signed without proper homework and it was done to demonstrate that the visit of dignitaries became successful,” said one former federal secretary when The News contacted him for seeking comments.

Even the Board of Investment (BoI) responsible for promoting investment does not have full knowledge that how many MoUs were signed for attracting investments into Pakistan. Only those MoU turned into agreement where the donors’ money involved into projects. But one federal secretary when contacted stated on the condition of anonymity that sometimes these signed MoUs created an embarrassing situation for the government at highest level.

This scribe contacted to Chairman Board of Investment Haroon Sharif for inquiring about exact number of MoUs signed by BoI in last two decades, he said that there would be totally different scenario as he held more than 50 interactions to finalise three MoU with Saudi authorities. He said that these three MoUs were related to establishment of oil refinery at Gwadar and petrochemical complex, renewable energy projects up to $2 billion and mineral development. Saudi investors have also shown their interest to get two RLNG power plants and they would bid for them.

However, he admitted that it was challenge for bureaucracy to turn these MoUs into viable projects. He said that the technical and feasibility studies would ascertain total estimated investment figures but it could be guessed anywhere $10 to $15 billion at least.