Mohammad Arshad Islamabad
The Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC), Thursday, approved construction of 69 km long (04-lane) Sambrial-Kharian Motorway.
It will be a high-speed toll road facility which will start from Sambrial city and end point would be Lahore- Sialkot Motorway. The motorway would be constructed on BOT basis at the total cost of Rs.43,382.552 million.
ECNEC met here with Federal Minster Abdul Hafeez Shaikh in the chair and considered and approved a summary regarding construction of additional 02-lanes and widening/rehabilitation of existing 02-lane carriageway of Shikarpur-Rajanpur section of Indus Highway N-55 to be executed by the National Highway Authority (NHA).
The project would be sponsored by the Ministry of Communications and ADB with the total cost of Rs.44,703.890 million including Rs.4470.390 (GOP share) and Rs.40,233.50 (ADB share).
Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Asad Umar, Federal Minister for Industries and Production Hammad Azhar, Federal Minister for Economic Affairs Division Khusro Bakhtiar, Advisor to the Prime Minister for Institutional Reforms and Austerity Dr. Ishrat Hussain, representatives of the Provincial Governments and senior officials participated in the meeting.
A summary was presented before ECNEC regarding 10,000 kanal land acquisition for Swat Motorway phase-II to be sponsored by the Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and executed by Pakhtunkhwa Highway Authority (PKHA) (through Federal PSDP) equal to RS.20,000 million for construction of about 80 km 04-lane motorway from Chakdara to Fatehpur.
The Committee approved the said project and strongly recommended to complete such projects on Public Private Partnership (PPP) basis.
The Committee commended such projects for promoting efficient and safe transportation facilities across the country.
ECNEC considered and approved the Sindh Resilience Project (Irrigation Component) for construction of small dams to address drought prone areas of Sindh including system for improving resilience phase-II in districts of Malir (Karachi), Jamshoro, Thatta, Shaheed Benazirabad, Sukkar, Khairpur, Qambar-Shahdad Kot and Tharparkar in the Province of Sindh.
