LAHORE: Special Assistant to Prime Minister, Irfan Siddiqui said that China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project was not simply a road or railway route, but a vital concept of development for which the nation will have to take its ownership for its smooth materialization and completion.
He expressed these views in a ‘Fikri Nashist on Chinese President’s visit to Pakistan’ held here at Nazria-e-Pakistan Trust (NPT) on Saturday.
He mentioned that $46 billion Chinese investment, in the wake of recent visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to Pakistan, was twice the total volume of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) which had been made in Pakistan since 1947 to date.
Irfan said, the CPEC was not being executed on the basis of area, province, ethnic and racialism, but its projects were being initiated wherever needed.
The CPEC consisting of around 51 agreements entailed numerous long-term (15 years), medium-term (10 years) and short-term (5 years)projects of energy generation, industrial and economic zones, roads network, the biggest airport at Gwadar and other infrastructural development across the country.
He said, “We have to protect this huge Chinese investment, and the game changer project from the elements trying to create hurdles in the country’s progress and prosperity through unjustified sit-ins and for petty political mileage.”
Irfan viewed that all the government departments, bureaucracy, politicians, youth and specially the media would have to play their due role in making successful the CPEC project with patriotism and national zeal. And above all, he said, the nation would have to take its ownership so that coming governments did not affect the corridor projects of national interest.
