A Pakistani minister has admitted that Islamabad failed to benefit from the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) before political controversies under the previous Imran Khan government forced Chinese investors to flee. Speaking at a public event, Pakistan’s Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal noted that the South Asian nation’s economy missed many opportunities to take off and “dropped the catch of the game changer CPEC.”
Iqbal held former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) responsible for damaging the reputation of Chinese investments, which, according to him, led investors to withdraw from the country despite Beijing’s support in difficult times.
The $60 billion CPEC project — connecting Xinjiang in China with Gwadar port in Pakistan’s Balochistan — was a central piece in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s pet Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It was envisioned to transform Pakistan’s infrastructure and economy while furthering China’s influence globally with Chinese-funded infrastructure projects.
Pakistan’s economy missed many opportunities to take off, and “we also have dropped the catch of game changer CPEC,” Iqbal said, speaking at the inaugural session of the DataFest Conference. It was a rare sight to see a sitting senior cabinet minister admit that CPEC objectives could not be achieved.
CPEC’s Progress In Pakistan
According to a report by Express Tribune, there has been little progress on CPEC since 2018.
“Fourteen meetings of the CPEC Joint Cooperation Committee (JCC)—the highest decision-making body—have been held since both countries launched the strategic initiative. But official circles acknowledge that the productive work had been done till the seventh JCC, which met in the fall of 2017,” the report said.
Pakistan has reaped short-term benefits from the CPEC, but long-term objectives have remained largely unachievable, the paper said.
“The second phase of CPEC, aimed at shifting Chinese industries to Pakistan and increasing the country’s exports through rapid industrialisation, could not kick off,” it said.
The paper reported that even more than 10 years after the implementation of CPEC began, both sides in the last JCC believed that it was necessary to implement support measures for Special Economic Zones (SEZs) and improve supporting facilities and services to attract enterprises to settle in the SEZs.
The Pakistani side assured them that it would continue to improve the business environment, continuously take facilitation measures, and support and attract foreign enterprises, including Chinese enterprises, to invest and operate in the SEZs, it added.
