THOUGH breakout of Coronavirus has inflicted a major blow to economy, opportunity in the form of multi billion dollars China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) provides a ray of hope to country’s leadership to steer the economy out of troubled waters and put it on a positive trajectory.
Reviewing progress on CPEC related projects, Prime Minister Imran Khan the other day expressed his firm commitment to complete the corridor project at all costs. His resolve show how much importance government accords to the project which has so far helped the country develop state of the art road infrastructure in the shape of motorways and address power shortages. Since the establishment of CPEC authority headed by Asim Saleem Bajwa, one has seen a renewed impetus to take forward the project into second phase, which envisages cooperation in most critical sectors of agriculture and industries. This second phase of CPEC is very important for us to upgrade our agriculture sector and revive industries that in fact will provide hundreds of thousands of job opportunities to the people and bolster our exports. This is the only course through which we can achieve sustainable economic growth and self-reliance. It is for our authorities to seize this opportunity knocking at our doors. Hence, Chinese investors should be fully facilitated to open up their businesses in the SEZs. Engagements with China should also be enhanced to ensure early transfer of technology in the agriculture sector. We need to learn from the best practices of China in agriculture sector to enhance per acre yield of cash crops such as cotton and wheat.
Also hurdles in the way of early commencement of work on upgradation of ML-1 should also be removed at the earliest. This project is important not only to make our rail journey safe but also realise the goal of turning Pakistan into a regional trade hub. People of Pakistan anxiously await the visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to perform ground breaking of this project. We believe the success of second phase of CPEC will take bilateral relationship between Pakistan and China to new heights and it will be a major stride forward for fulfilment of President Xi Jinping’s vision of shared prosperity.
