KABUL: An international company is making huge investment at the Kandahar airfield and the ambitious projects will turn the southern province into an economic zone, an official said on Tuesday.
Samim Khpalwak, the governor’s spokesman, told Pajhwok Afghan News a high level delegation from Kabul held talks about the investment with Governor Humayun Azizi.
The delegation also visited the Kandahar airfield and inspected the installations there, he said.
The delegates included presidential advisor on aviation Daud Sultanzoy, protocol director at the Presidential Palace Mohammad Nasim Pashtun Sharifi and CORD international group officials.
The delegation held talks with the governor on the programme designed to turn the facility into an economic hub.
Sultanozy said the government planned to make huge investments at the Kandahar airfield on installations that had been handed over to the Afghan side by foreign troops.
He said with the implementation of the plan, President Ashraf Ghani wanted to create jobs and turn Kandahar province into an economic zone.
CORD international group head Jason Black said they had been handed over nearly 100,000 feet land at the Kandahar airfield and they would establish international centres of technology, media, health and others on the land.
He said practical works on the mega project would be launched in February next year. He said his company had a vast experience in area of economy and on the basis of that experience, Kandahar would be converted into an economic zone.
He said such zones existed in developed countries like the UAE, China and the United States and it would be built for the first time in Kandahar.
Black said the project would create an estimated 10 million jobs that would change Afghanistan’s entire economic situation.
Governor Azizi said the establishment of the economic zone in Kandahar would be giant leap towards Afghanistan’s economic development due to its strategic location.
He said the project would usher in a new era of economic prosperity not only for Kandahar but the whole of the country.
The governor said the provincial administration would provide all possible facilities to local and foreign investors to fearlessly make investments in the province.
Azizi said Kandahar was an agriculture province and urged fundamental works in the sector in order to improve the economic condition of farmers.