(
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default...6-4-2003_pg3_7)
Recent days have seen a series of conferences aimed at promoting foreign investment in Pakistan, with several more such moots due to take place in the days ahead, including a meeting of government officials, bankers and adventurous entrepreneurs to be held in Gwadar on April 28 under the auspices of the Board of Investment, headed by Wasim Haqqie. The keynote speaker at the Gwadar conference will be Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz.
Earlier this month, Aziz told a team of visiting Chinese experts in Islamabad that the Asian Development Bank was coordinating the convening of a conference of Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan for the construction of linkage facilities with Gwadar port, which is currently under construction by the Chinese. It is expected to become a gateway port for Central Asia and the western Chinese province of Xingjiang.
Development plans for Gwadar include an export processing zone, an industrial zone, a hotel zone, a pollution-free residential zone, and a new Rs 450 million airport with a 9,000-foot jet runway capable of handling Airbus and Boeing aircrafts.
A Chinese company is working at top speed on the new port’s first phase, with the construction of two breakwaters, three ship’s berths, a container terminal and related shore facilities due to be completed six months ahead of schedule by the end of next year at a cost of $ 250 million. China has given $ 198 in aid for the project, while the rest of the money has been contributed by the Pakistan government.
In the project’s second phase, which is expected to be launched in early 2005, 23 more berths and related facilities will be built at an estimated cost of $ 500 million. During Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali’s visit to Beijing last month, the Chinese government is said to have agreed in principle to also consider funding construction of the second phase.
Work has also begun on the construction of Mirani Dam, north of Gwadar. The project is part of the Water and Power Development Authority’s ambitious “Vision 2025” programme and will supply water for irrigating 30,000 acres of land for agriculture as well as supplying water for domestic, commercial and industrial needs to Gwadar and other communities in the Mekran coastal region.
Meanwhile, work on the Coastal Highway linking Karachi to Gwadar is also proceeding at top speed. It is being built by the Pakistan Army’s Frontier Works Organisation at a cost of $ 200 million. About 200 km of the 600-km highway has been completed and the remaining 400 km is expected to be ready in two years’ time, with construction currently proceeding at an average rate of 15 km a month.
A link road connecting Gwadar to the Indus highway at Khuzdar is also planned. The link will open up a land trade route between Gwadar port and China via the Karakoram Highway which off takes from the Indus Highway near Islamabad.
I mention all these facts by way of illustrating that Pakistan’s doom-and-gloom brigade of commentators are quite wrong when they say that there is no development work going on and that Pakistan is sinking deeper and deeper into poverty. Yes, the rise in poverty in the last 10 years or so remains a serious problem and one that needs to be urgently addressed. At the same time, however, it has to be said that the situation is not as grim as it is sometimes made out to be.
For one thing, bilateral and multilateral foreign aid inflows to Pakistan have risen to more than $ 4 billion a year since 9/11, after the lifting of US and other western sanctions. For another, there has been a marked improvement in the country’s macro economic indicators in the last two years, with low inflation (3.5 per cent), a significant reduction in foreign debt-servicing payments (which have dropped from 60 per cent of budget revenues to 40 per cent due to debt-rescheduling, lower interest rates and loan write-offs), and a sharp rise in remittance inflows and foreign exchange reserves. Capital markets are also performing well, after having been in the doldrums throughout most of the late 1990s.
Remittances are currently running at about $ 3 billion a year; forex reserves have hit a record $ 10.5 billion; and — wonder of wonders — the high-flying Karachi stock market continues to be the best-performing market in the world, despite occasional hiccups. Even the US war against Iraq has not had much of an adverse effect on stock market, as is evident from the fact that the benchmark KSE-100 share price index has bounced back from a 400-point decline in January and resumed its upward march towards breaking the 3,000-point barrier.
Pakistan’s gross domestic product, which grew by 3.6 per cent in 2002, is on track to grow by 4.5 per cent this year, according to a statement last month by an IMF assessment mission to Pakistan, led by Klaus Enders, assistant director of the fund’s Middle East department. Enders said another encouraging development was that the fiscal deficit had been contained.
Even exports — another key economic indicator — are now showing a reasonably healthy upward trend, after stagnating at around $ 8 billion annually for years. Exports grew by more than 20 per cent during the last nine months over the corresponding period in fiscal 2001-2002, to nearly $ 8 billion for the July 2002-March 2003 period, including $ 938 million in the month of March alone.
At this rate of growth, exports for the fiscal 2002-2003 are expected to exceed $ 10 billion by end May, a month before the end of the current fiscal year on June 30. This will be the first time in Pakistan’s history that this figure will have been crossed.
Buoyed by this improved performance, optimistic government officials are now forecasting exports of $ 11.5 billion for next year. “If we can earn 10 billion dollars this year, let us plan to earn 15 billion dollars in the next two or three years and 20 billion dollars in five years or so,” said Export Promotion Bureau Chairman and Minister of State Tariq Ikram on Saturday.
While all this is still a very far cry from the chart-busting export performance of tiger economies like South Korea and Singapore, it is, at least, a step in the right direction. As they say in China, “Even a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
It's been confirmed. Gwadur port will be open six months ahead of schedule - a monumental and historic achievment for Pakistan
Plz pray,
sardarzada