A senior Pakistani minister has admitted that his country could not benefit from the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Because of the previous governments, Chinese investors have been forced to leave the country.
According to the report of The Express Tribune, Pakistan’s Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal said that Pakistan has missed many such opportunities when our economy could have taken huge leaps. We could not even benefit from CPEC, which could prove to be a game-changer. Could not even capitalize on the benefits of CPEC.
Speaking at the inaugural session of the two-day Datafest conference organized by Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal gave the example of cricket and said that Pakistan could not derive any concrete benefits from CPEC. He blamed former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) for this failure.
Iqbal said that China helped Pakistan in difficult times but opposition parties tried to surround Chinese investment in controversies, due to which China had to step back from Pakistan.
Let us tell you that this is perhaps the first time that a sitting senior cabinet minister has admitted that the goals of CPEC (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor) could not be achieved.
Let us tell you that CPEC is considered one of the most ambitious economic and strategic projects of the 21st century. The US $ 60 billion CPEC (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor), considered the flagship project of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ambitious multi-billion dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), connects China’s Xinjiang region with Pakistan’s Gwadar Port in Balochistan. This project is part of China’s strategy to increase its global influence, under which it wants to strengthen its presence in various countries through infrastructure built with Chinese capital.
This is a major part of China’s huge global initiative Belt and Road Initiative. Its objective is to connect China’s western province Xinjiang with Pakistan’s Gwadar port through road, rail and energy networks. The total length of this corridor is about 3,000 kilometers and includes highways, railway lines and oil-gas pipelines, hydro power and solar projects, Special Economic Zones (SEZs) and development of Gwadar Port.
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