Foreign investment in Punjab: No follow-up on hundreds of MoUs

Nearly 400 MoUs have been signed with the Chinese over 8 years.

LAHORE:

The Punjab government has signed nearly 400 Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) with the Chinese government over the last eight years. All the MoUs are gathering dust in the secretariat’s records room without any progress on a single project.

Last year, the Punjab chief minister (CM) on his visit to China signed 37 MoUs regarding various projects but none of them saw the light of the day.

These included a 250 mega watts (MW) power project in south Punjab.

Sources in the Punjab government said, the Chinese government was irked when the Punjab government would not respond to a reminder it had sent after it had not heard from the government for six months after the signing of the MoU.

When the CM expressed his desire to visit China this year, he was politely told to come prepared for talks on the projects.  This was the reason the Chinese government had insisted on signing agreements rather than MoUs.

During the CM’s on-giving visit 25 MoUs are slated to be signed.  However, insiders say that none of the signed agreements may materialise into actual projects. The visit, thus, is expected to achieve little more than generate some goodwill between the two countries.

After the passage of the 18th amendment to the Constitution, the provinces offer investment opportunities to foreign partners but the federal government retains a supervisory role.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 21^st, 2011.