ISLAMABAD: Pakistan and China have chalked out a formula for to link the strategically-located Gwadar Port with western China within the next five years.
Under the formula, China will invest $30 billion and $40 billion in Pakistan to develop the much-awaited Pak-China Economic Corridor (PCEC) which the logistics experts believe would enable China to significantly reduce the cost of its 70-million-TEUs containerised trade with Europe.
According to reports, once developed the proposed corridor would cut the conventional 19,000-mile Sino-Europe shipping route by thousands of miles.
The reports pointed out that Sino-Europe bilateral trade involved around 225 million TEUs and If only 10 percent of this huge containerised trade routed through Pakistan, only transport industry grow by three fold.
Work on the significant project, however, has been lingering for quite some time as the Chinese government has been planning linking Gwadar Port with western parts of China through constructing a new road network.
Pakistan, however, suggested to China that instead of building a new road they should tape Pakistan’s existing communication network and build an expressway to link Gwadar-Ratodhero Road to the national highway.
And reportedly the two sides have decided the formula to make a matching investment on the expressway project.
Under the formula, a third lane would be added to the two-lane national highway road network to save money.
However, to reap trickled down dividends of the Sino-Europe future trade, Pakistan would have to build local infrastructure through developing cargo villages, dry ports, attracting fresh investment in trucking field and so on.
