Planning Minister to visit Gwadar soon to review progress of CPEC projects

Islamabad: Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Ahsan Iqbal will visit Gwadar early next month to review the progress of China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) projects, said an official announcement.

The minister will conduct the visit soon after Eidul-Fitr – to be celebrated in the first week of May – to witness the pace of work on the CPEC ventures.

On Friday, Iqbal visited the CPEC Authority Secretariat where Executive Director CPEC Qammar Sarwar Abbasi, gave a briefing to the minister over the so far progress in executing the projects which is a game changer for the region.

Gwadar is one of the central points in the CPEC and it has a huge impact on the country. “Soon after Eidul Fitr, I will visit Gwadar to personally review the projects of CPEC and my top priority is to expedite all the pending projects which remained on slow pace,” maintained the minister while chairing a high-level meeting here.

The minister will also inaugurate the installation of Solar Project Generation System for households in various parts of Gwadar. The project was launched by the Chinese companies in the city to support the poor household.

During the briefing, ED, CPEC, Qammar Ababsi informed the minister that so far 940 Solar Generation systems have been installed for households and a total of 3,000 panels will be installed in order to facilitate the residents.

During the meeting, the Minister also directed the Executive Director, CPEC to invite all Chinese companies working on CPEC projects. ‘I want to meet them next week to listen to their problems so that bottlenecks can be removed to streamline their working.

The Minister also directed to ensure the fool proof security of the Chinese working on various projects and issues pertaining to their visas will be resolved on a priority basis through the Ministry of Interior.

The Minister stressed that working relations with line ministries should be streamlined to give them greater ownership of CPEC projects.

He said that government officials played a very active and positive role in realizing US $ 29 billion investment under CPEC. Unfortunately, the previous government created an atmosphere of intimidation which took away the initiative of government officials. The new government will restore the confidence of government officials, he added.

Later, speaking to journalists, Ahsan Iqbal, mentioned that the federal government had set the target for completion of all the nine Special Economic Zones (SEZs) identified under CPEC, by 2025.

He stated that according to the five years’ plan (2020-25), the government was focusing only industrial development under CPEC and it was expected that during that period some US $40 billion foreign investment would be poured in to the country’s SEZs.

Iqbal underscored that the ML-1 railway project under CPEC could also not be initiated in four years which was a game changer project in Pakistan railway.