PM’s China visit: ‘MoUs for $45b projects signed in China’

Minister says projects to generate 10,400 megawatts of electricity.

FAISALABAD: During his recent China visit, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif signed memoranda of understanding (MoUs) involving $45 billion investment that will bring a socioeconomic revolution in Pakistan, State Minister for Water and Power Abid Sher Ali said on Monday.

He was talking to reporters after inaugurating a 132-KV grid station at M-3 Industrial City near Sahianwala.

“The government is trying to provide uninterrupted electricity supply to the industrial sector. However, the protesters in Islamabad are trying to choke the pace of progress and prosperity at the behest of their foreign masters,” the minister said.



“The prime minister’s visit has opened new avenues of progress and prosperity for our country. During the visit, projects were signed to generate 10,400 megawatts of electricity,” he said.

Ali said that the PML-N government had put the country back on the road to progress and prosperity despite opposition from anti-democratic and anti-Pakistan elements.

“When the projects signed with China are completed, the people of Pakistan will witness a qualitative as well as quantitative change. Their living standards will improve,” the minister said.

Khawaja Asim Khursheed, the Faisalabad Industrial Estate Development and Management Company (FIEDMC) chairman, said that the 132-KV grid station had been completed at a cost of Rs300 million.

“This grid station will provide 40 megawatts of electricity to the industrial units at the M-3 Industrial City. In collaboration with the Punjab Power Development Company, FIEDMC has started work on a coal power project that will produce 100 megawatts of electricity,” he said. He said the investment would accelerate the industrial activities in the area. “It will also provide jobs to more than 300,000 people,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 11^th, 2014.