BEIJING: Experts spoke high of China’s decisive role in transforming Pakistan’s energy sector, as well as boosting the country’s overall economy on Saturday.
It was China’s support that paved the way, making Pakistan free of its major socio-economic crisis mainly the load-shedding, experts said.
China over the last five years, under the leadership of President Xi Jinping, pursued economic diplomacy in carrying out its decades’ old historical relationship with Pakistan.
A power project planned under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has cut 13-14 hours of daily power outages in 2013 to zero in 70 percent areas in Pakistan.
According to the experts, the CPEC’s impact on South Asia’s economy is also quite favourable as it helped the regional countries to achieve 5.3-per cent economic growth in 2017, the highest in last 10 years.
The CPEC, a flagship project under the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative, aims to promote economic cooperation between Pakistan and China.
Proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013, the initiative aims to create greater trade, infrastructure and people-to-people links between Asia, Europe, Africa and beyond by reviving and expanding the ancient Silk Road routes.
The modern version comprises an overland Silk Road Economic Belt and a 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road.
It is a global public good that follows international rules, an international cooperation platform that follows market principles, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said at a press conference on the sidelines of the annual session of the National People’s Congress, China’s national legislature.
Wang also said China will work on both hardware connectivity of infrastructure and software connectivity policy, regulation, and standards. It would be high-standard and economically viable, beneficial to the world as well as to China, Wang added.
So far, the initiative has gained support from more than 100 countries and international organisations, and more than 80 of them have signed cooperation agreements with China.
According to China’s Ministry of Commerce, Chinese companies have built 75 zones for economic and trade cooperation in 24 countries along the Belt and Road routes, contributing more than 2.21 billion US dollars in tax revenue and creating almost 209,000 local jobs.
Chinese enterprises made a non-financial direct investment of 14.36 billion dollars in 59 countries along the Belt and Road in 2017.
Moreover, 7,217 overseas projects were signed by Chinese enterprises with 61 countries along the Belt and Road, the value of the newly-signed contracts amounting to 144.32 billion dollars.