Rawalpindi Ring Road scam: Govt preferred public-private partnership

ISLAMABAD: The Rawalpindi Ring Road controversy erupted because the government had refused to get a $400 million concessional loan from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and preferred to construct it through half-baked public-private partnership, The News has learnt.

In a story published in this newspaper, this correspondent had written that “the AIIB committed $1 billion concessional loan for three important projects including $400 million for Rawalpindi Ring Road (RRR) project connecting the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi and two projects for Lahore including Waste Water Treatment and Urban/Environmental Development Project.

It had been written that “the talks with the AIIB were held in 2018 but now more than two years have passed and the AIIB may withdraw this loan facility. All relevant official documents available with The News revealed that three projects are in the pipeline but now things are quite unclear where no one exactly knows what would be the fate of these three projects”.

“Now the half-baked public private partnership without any financial studies is under consideration that may cause further complications,” said one top official who has dealt with this project from scratches. However, the Buzdar administration in Punjab is completely clueless and may succumb to the pressure for accepting expansive proposals for executing the projects. This was all written in June 2020 and the government did not get loan from the AIIB, so now this whole project has landed into an endless controversy.

The official said the PTI-led government both at the Centre and Punjab placed a highly important project into cold storage, which was under consideration for three decades and was going to kick-start Rs 1 trillion economic activity in this region. Now Prime Minister Imran Khan should constitute a high-powered committee led by Minister for Planning Asad Umar, Deputy Chairman Planning Commission Mohammad Jehanzeb Khan, Chairman Planning and Development Punjab, some senior officers of Punjab and top town planners to probe and ascertain facts behind putting this project into cold storage. There is the need to investigate why a cheap mode of financing from the AIIB was refused because apparently it seemed that the cheapest loan was declined to avoid competitive bidding and awarding the project to liked ones. If the AIIB loan had been obtained, the government had to follow all required procedures for alignment of road and follow international standards but this whole project was made controversial and no one exactly knew how it would be made viable again.