Roads to nowhere

Despite serious questions about the economic viability raised by the Planning Commission, the government has signed with the World Bank a loan of $407 million for building a 48-kilometre (km) motorway from Peshawar to Torkham. With the government hungry for dollars from anywhere and in any way, the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC) headed by the chief economic manager overruled the Planning Commission’s appraisal presented at the Central Development Working Party (CDWP). If anything, the resulting inflow of dollars is better than the hot money inflows. Of course, the World Bank story is that the motorway will boost economic development in the least-developed region of the country. Some might say it is a belated compensation after the neglect of the Western Route under the previous government’s approach to CPEC. Others would see a strategic counter-play winked at by the US to China’s One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative, as the link is part of the Corridor 5 of the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation. A competing acronym, KPEC against CPEC, has also been mentioned in the presser.

What is the Planning Commission/CDWP’s case against? First, it is a road to nowhere as there is nothing in the name of a road beyond Torkham. Until peace breaks out in Afghanistan, the story about the great economic benefits of trucks moving through Central Asia to Russia and beyond is a pipe dream. There is not even an MoU between Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan to link Peshawar and Dushanbe via Kabul. Secondly, the Planning Commission estimates that the traffic demand does not fully justify even the existing two-lane single carriageway. At any rate, there are more cars than there are freight carriers. Finally, just the dualisation of the existing road will be sufficient to cater to a lot more than the existing traffic for many years to come. This will save the country from the burden of debt to be contracted for a motorway that would cost 33% more per km than the Lahore-Abdul Hakeem Motorway.

The refrain literally resonates the past. The PTI is not the first to fall in love with Sher Shah Suri. Back in 1990-93, the PML-N mark one had a grand design of constructing modern, state-of-the-art motorways across Pakistan. The Lahore-Islamabad Motorway (M2) was the first mega project of what was touted as the Sher Shah Suri vision. In the normal project approval (PC-I) process, the Planning Commission/CDWP came out with very nearly the same three observations. First, a limited access road will divide communities and open up insignificant business opportunities for the desolate areas along the way. Secondly, the cost would be too high to justify the expected traffic demand. Finally, it will be much more economical to make the 90km shorter GT road a dual carriageway from the present two-lane single carriageway.

All hell broke loose, with Shehbaz Sharif fuming: there would be no Jarneli Sarak (popular name for GT road) if Sher Shah Suri had gone the PC-I route. His elder brother, the prime minister, took the national highways out of the purview of the Planning Commission and set up a National Highway Council under his direct command. The National Highway Authority (NHA) was created to prepare projects for the approval of the Council and fast-track implementation. It was completed in November 1997 during the second coming of the PML-N government. Money was borrowed from abroad in both cases. Then it was the South Korean company, Daewo; now it is the World Bank.

Whenever I go to Lahore from Islamabad and return the same night, I keep wondering who had the last laugh, the politicians or the technocrats?

Published in The Express Tribune, December 20^th, 2019.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.