Pakistan seeks $1.7b investment for highway

Construction of Hyderabad-Sukkur section will start in the first quarter of 2017

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is seeking foreign investment of $1.7 billion to build a new highway in the southern province of Sindh to supplement a Chinese-funded infrastructure network being laid across the country, reported Bloomberg.

According to the Bloomberg report, the National Highway Authority (NHA) will ask for bids next week for the 296-kilometres (184 miles) highway between the cities of Hyderabad and Sukkur, the agency’s Chairman Shahid Ashraf Tarar said in an interview.



“Other than the Chinese, this time we expect the Turkish, Malaysians and South Koreans to also come and bid,” Bloomberg said quoting Tarar.

The report further said that Pakistan’s economic growth had accelerated to almost 5% in the past three years after averting a balance-of-payments crisis in 2013 by submitting to an International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan programme worth $6.6 billion, which ended last month.

“Along with an easing of inflation and as domestic security threats have abated, China announced last year it would invest in projects worth about $46 billion in Pakistan as part of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).”

“Furthermore, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is pegging his 2018 re-election campaign on bridging chronic energy and infrastructure gaps as his administration targets a 7% economic growth rate within two years.”

According to the report, the construction of a six-lane highway on the eastern route of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is expected to start in the first quarter of next year. “There is a big gap between the potential and the actual road network,” said Topline Securities Pakistan CEO Muhammad Sohail.

“Investors will look into this opportunity as the economy continues to expand. Start your day with what’s moving markets,” he remarked.

“The highway authority has so far started over $9.5 billion worth of projects in the past three years and is hoping to attract another $5 billion investment in the next five; more than half of which will be pegged to upgrade the CPEC routes,” informed Tarar.



“The length of the main highway will be tripled to 1,800 kilometres by linking all road arteries with industrial zones on the route,” he added.

The 3,000-kilometer-long corridor stretches from Xinjiang in western China to Pakistan’s Gwadar on the Arabian Sea. Of China’s planned investment, $11 billion is allocated for infrastructure projects and big chunk of it will be spent in the Balochistan province; home to the deep-sea port in Gwadar.

“The landscape of infrastructure is going to be transformed in the next three years,” said Tarar.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 8^th, 2016.

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