BEIJING: External Affairs Minister Sushma Sawraj addressing the Fifth Ministerial Conference of the Heart of Asia Istanbul Process in Islamabad, Pakistan on Wednesday.
China, Saarc nations can be new force of economic development.
Participants at two Central and South Asia ministerial conferences held in Pakistan pledged their support to boost investment in energy, trade, infrastructure and communications in the region. Thirty-two foreign and economic ministers and top officials met at two high-profile conferences in Islamabad and Lahore this week.
The seven South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) nations pledged to expedite their mutual investment and trade expansion at the conference in Lahore. The Saarc nations’ mutual business is currently only five per cent in comparison with their global trade even after three decades of the bloc in existence.
Meanwhile, the other ministerial summit in Islamabad was the fifth in the series of ‘Heart of Asia-Istanbul Process’.
The decisions taken at the two conferences covered large-scale investment in the region – funded from within, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, multilateral banks and from sources outside the region.
The range of seriousness and interest in the funding is evident from the fact that the Islamabad Conference and the Saarc session were attended by foreign and economic ministers and top executives from Azerbaijan, the UAE, Norway, the US and EU.
One of the attending ministers sought “peace, security and end to fighting” to ensure the success of the upcoming new economic zone that stretches from Bangladesh to Pakistan and north onwards to Central Asia, with Beijing building its own $46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
Are these just a pipe dream of politicians or will something concrete happen? The proof of the pudding lies in the fact that China has already started building several of the energy, infrastructure and communications projects in Pakistan and north-east on the Corridor’s path.
At the end of the Heart of Asia Conference in Islamabad, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif flew to Turkmenistan to start talks on building the $7.6 billion Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (Tapi) natural gas pipeline. It will supply natural gas to Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.
The pipeline is slated to be completed by December 2017, said Shahzadi Umarzai Tiwana, parliamentary secretary to the ministry of petroleum and natural resources.
In another sign of regional cooperation, Qatar started feeding huge amounts of LNG to Pakistan this week. Motorists cheered as they managed to fill gas in cars after weeks of shutdown at petrol stations.
Indian Minister for External Affairs Sushma Swaraj highlighted the need to resolve political and economic problems between India and Pakistan, the region’s two biggest countries. She insisted that Pakistan should allow trucks carrying merchandise from her country to Afghanistan and Central Asia at zero tariff.
