ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will take parliamentary leaders into confidence over the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) in a meeting in Islamabad on Wednesday.
During the meeting, the Finance Minister Ishaq Dar and the Minister for Planning and Development Ahsan Iqbal will brief the parliamentary leaders about the project.
The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Awami National Party (ANP) and other political parties have expressed their reservations and raised fears that smaller provinces will be deprived of the CPEC by changing its route.
However, the federal the government has claimed that no change is being made in the route and termed it as a misleading propaganda.
The $46 billion CPEC project was agreed during the recent visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to Pakistan, and it aims to connect Gwadar Port in southwestern Pakistan to China’s northwestern autonomous region of Xinjiang, via a network of highways, railways and pipelines to transport oil and gas.
The economic corridor is considered central to China–Pakistan relations and will run about 3,000 kilometers from Gwadar to Kashgar.
On Tuesday, while presiding over a National Harmony Workshop at the National Defence University in Islamabad, the minster for planning and development said that Sindh and Balochistan would be the biggest beneficiaries of power generation triggered by the CPEC project with 36 percent and 26 percent the total production of 13,880 megawatts going to them respectively.
The minister said that the Joint Working Group on the CPEC would be constituted within two months to start the consultation process with provinces on industrial parks and economic zones.
