Big challenges for China-Pakistan development project
Source : Channel News Asia Date : 04-02-2015
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The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which includes the linking of Pakistan's Gwadar port to China's Xinjiang Region, faces numerous challenges ranging from insurgency and territorial disputes to extreme weather.
ISLAMABAD: China and Pakistan are working on a development project worth some US$45 billion called the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.
Part of this project, involves the construction of a series of highways and rail links connecting the strategically-placed Gwadar port - officially entrusted to China Overseas Port Holding - in the southwest of Pakistan to Kashgar, some 2500 kilometres away in China's western Xinjiang province.
Pakistani officials say China has agreed to invest over US$33 billion in energy projects and over US$11 billion in infrastructure development - part of which is the link to connect Gwadar to Kashgar.
"This corridor holds tremendous potential for a number of reasons - if goods are supplied from Gwadar via Xinjiang to the Chinese port of Shanghai the distance would be cut by one third,” said Senator Mushahid Hussain, chairman of the Pakistan China Institute.
“The second important thing is infrastructure - roads and rail road projects - that can change the economic destiny of the people living in some of the most backward parts of Pakistan which are resource rich, which are strategic and which are right of the Arabian sea."
But carving road and rail tracks to connect north and south is easier said than done. They will need to pass through Balochistan which is suffering the impact of an ongoing insurgency. India has also voiced it objections, since the link will run through disputed territory.
There is also the challenging geography, says an economist who worked on the project's financial feasibility plan. "Apparently it looks that a financial constraint is there, but more than that there is a geographical constraint also because of the two reasons. The first one is the extreme weather in the north of Pakistan and the second one is the terrain," said Syed Nazare Hyder, former senior economic advisor of the Sustainable Development Policy Institute.
The project is based on eight memorandum of understandings signed in November 2014 between Pakistan and China, and the project will reportedly be completed in six years.
But guaranteeing the safety of foreign workers in a country plagued by terrorism is an issue. Chinese engineers have previously been killed here as protecting foreign experts in the midst of military operations poses a major challenge for the government of Nawaz Sharif.
Meanwhile, Pakistani government officials have been reluctant to speak about progress so far achieved in starting the project. For the last two weeks, Channel NewsAsia has been liaising with officials from various government departments who ultimately declined interview requests.
While the potentially huge benefits of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor could be used to leverage huge sums of political capital, the governmental silence on the other hand is lending evermore credence to the claims of some government whistle-blowers that the project is facing serious security concerns.