Report by Engineering Post
Time-tested all weather friendly neighboring country China’s mega development projects named the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and its flagship great game changer China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) witnessed both progress, achievements and setbacks during the just concluded year 2024.
CPEC development moved at a snail’s pace mainly owing to the sudden surge of terrorism in the country and exposing the Chinese workers and projects under constant threats, especially in Balochistan, Gwadar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and many other parts of the country.
The great game changer China-Pakistan Economic Corridor after successfully completing the first has entered the second phase and both China and Pakistan at their respectively appropriate levels were engaged in finalizing plans to not only maintain the tempo of already made valuable contribution in terms of economic stability, industrial sustainability, qualitative infrastructure development, elimination of poverty through provision of direct and indirect jobs in large number ,further development renewables (both solar and wind) as well as community and social development in different parts of the country but also carry all this to possibly greater heights in the coming years.
It is worth mentioning here evading the negative impacts in some respects owing to the security problems that the total installed capacity of the 14 energy sector projects under the overall framework of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor which have since been operationalized accounts for about one/fifth of the total installed power capacity of Pakistan.
According to the data available from the official sources, China had till now US $ 25.4 billion directly in the projects in different sectors in Pakistan creating 236000. jobs, generating 8000 megawatt of electricity and construction of 510 kilometers of highways and 886 kilometers of national electricity grid.
During China-Pakistan Economic Corridor second phase, more corridors were most likely to be added under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor framework. These may include Growth Corridor, Livelihood Enhancing Corridor, Innovation Corridor, Green Corridor and Regional Corridor and opening of a comprehensive Safety and Security Corridor focusing on anti-terrorism cooperation ensuring mutual benefits of both the countries.
