Our contractual deals should be upfront rather than relying on intents and hopes.
SINGAPORE: This is apropos Rana Sajjad Ahmad’s article “Amending laws to allow Chinese investment” (January 23). Any recourse to obviate the laid down procedures in order to accommodate the Chinese is fraught with dangers. The $22 billion investment that China is promising to Pakistan will not come in one go, while we will be constrained to relax the rules to accommodate China at once. What if the promised investment flow hits some serious snags?
It is high time our leadership started respecting our own rules and regulations before encouraging and enticing others to bend them. The Chinese government had agreed to fund and upgrade the Karakoram Highway almost a decade ago. It still remains a pipedream as loan from the Export-Import Bank of China never materialised. Our contractual deals should be upfront rather than relying on intents and hopes.
Tariq Mahmud
Published in The Express Tribune, January 24th, 2014.
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