MINISTER for Privatization Fawad Hassan Fawad has acknowledged in a candid manner that Pakistan miserably failed to realize even one-fifth of the potential offered by the epoch-making initiative of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Speaking at an event, he said that Pakistan did not have the capacity to implement $62 billion of CPEC projects and “yet we kept talking about these numbers for political benefits” adding putting a number to CPEC in public was a political move, which no country does in the world, except Pakistan.
There are two aspects of the soul-searching remarks of the Minister, who remained closely associated with all the processes and actions that culminated into launching of the CPEC – Pakistan did not have the capacity to implement such a huge initiative and that there was almost no progress on the CPEC during entire tenure of the PTI Government. A third aspect was also highlighted by another speaker at the event — the Chinese investment under the framework of the CPEC was not as divergent as this is in Indonesia. There is no doubt, we lost considerable time in overcoming obstacles to effective launching and implementation of the CPEC as it was, like Kalabagh Dam, politicized by vested interests on the pretext of eastern and western routes, despite the fact that both were there in the plan. Similarly, the question arises why we could not act upon the advice of China to enhance our exports meaningfully, for which a cushion was also provided by Beijing through Special Economic Zones. It was because of the criminal negligence on our part to clear hurdles in the way of establishment of these zones that we lost a golden opportunity to attract Chinese investment in a meaningful manner. However, they say it is never too late to mend and we hope the caretaker setup as well as the future government that would be formed after general elections will see to it that the work on CPEC is not only accelerated but its scope also expanded to include more areas of interest to Pakistan.
