Ahsan Iqbal concedes Pakistan 'dropped the catch' on CPEC, blames PTI

Pakistan could not benefit from the "game changer" China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and Chinese investors were forced to flee due to attempts by the previous government to scandalise their investments, said Minister for Planning Ahsan Iqbal on Tuesday.

Pakistan's economy missed many opportunities to take off and "we also have dropped the catch of game changer CPEC", said the minister while addressing an audience of hundreds of students. Iqbal used a cricket analogy to explain that the country had not been able to benefit from CPEC and blamed the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf for the failure. It was probably rare that a sitting senior cabinet minister admitted that CPEC objectives could not be achieved.

He was speaking during the inaugural session of the two-day DataFest Conference, organised by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) to create awareness about the maximum use of data. China helped Pakistan in difficult times but the opponents tried to scandalise the Chinese investment and forced it to leave Pakistan, said Iqbal.

There has been little progress on CPEC since 2018. Fourteen meetings of the CPEC Joint Cooperation Committee (JCC) – the highest decision-making body – have been held since both countries launched the strategic initiative. But official circles acknowledge that the productive work had been done till the seventh JCC, which met in the fall of 2017. Pakistan has reaped short-term benefits from CPEC but long-term objectives remained largely unachievable. In the last meeting of the Joint Working Group on Long-Term Plan, both sides agreed to focus on cooperation in fields such as agriculture, industry, science and technology, information technology, social and economic development, renewable energy and resilient transport infrastructure.

The two sides also agreed to continuously deepen the alignment between the CPEC Five Corridors and the Uraan Pakistan framework. The second phase of CPEC, aimed at shifting Chinese industries to Pakistan and increasing the country's exports through rapid industrialisation, could not kick off.

In the 14th JCC meeting held two months ago, both sides reaffirmed their commitment to promoting the effective implementation of the Action Plan for Framework Agreement on Industrial Cooperation to achieve the grand goals set in the agreement and agreed to conduct timely assessment of progress to ensure the timely implementation of key measures, according to draft minutes of the JCC.

Even more than 10 years after the implementation of CPEC began, both sides in the last JCC "believed that it is necessary to further implement the support measures for the Special Economic Zones (SEZs) and improve the supporting facilities and services to better attract enterprises to settle in the SEZs".

The Pakistani side assured them that it would continue to improve the business environment, continuously take facilitation measures and support and attract foreign enterprises including Chinese enterprises to invest and operate in the SEZs.

So far, the total installed capacity of commercially operational energy projects under CPEC has reached above 8,900 megawatts with a total investment of $19.5 billion, helping alleviate Pakistan's power shortages at the time of peak crisis. The country's inability to make full payments for the energy purchased from Chinese plants also remains one of the outstanding commercial issues between the two nations.

In the last JCC meeting, China appreciated Pakistan's efforts for electricity payments but hoped that Islamabad would take more effective measures to pay the remaining outstanding bills and make timely foreign exchange settlement to ensure the sustainability of projects. Speaking to the audience, the planning minister reiterated the need to reopen the National Finance Commission award by delinking population from the distribution formula. The minister said that provinces did not have the incentive to control population, as it would reduce their share in the NFC.

He has earlier proposed to review the NFC award, freeze the population number at 241.5 million and include indicators such as water and climate.

He also proposed a reduction in the weight of population. Eighty-two per cent of the NFC is distributed on the basis of population among provinces, which is an incentive against controlling the population and exaggerating the number. Pakistan's annual population growth rate is 2.6%, which is near the economic growth rate and is highly unsustainable.