By Shahbaz Rana
July 26, 2015
By preferring a
route that passes through Punjab and Sindh rather than Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and
Balochistan, the federal government is artificially inflating the cost of the
China-Pakistan economic corridor, to the point where it may become economically
unviable, claims a report studying the matter issued by the Balochistan
government.
The report,
titled “China Pakistan Economic Corridor: The Route Controversy”, addresses
what Quetta feels is Islamabad’s lack of consistency on the matter, and its
failure to take into account the needs and desires of all federating units of
the country. The matter could get politically inconvenient for the federal
government, since Balochistan Chief Minister Abdul Malik Baloch’s National
Party is an ally of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz.
However, Planning
Minister Ahsan Iqbal claims that the report is one-sided and did not take into
account the views of what he feels is the main stakeholder in CPEC: the federal
government.
The report was
prepared by the chief minister’s Policy Reform Unit, headed by economist Kaiser
Bengali. It analyses the viability of the three CPEC routes based on three
parameters: population density, total area under cultivation along the routes
and total production of four major crops. These parameters become the base for
determining the cost of land acquisition and displacement of population, the
socio economic benefits and the environmental impact.
Pakistan has
identified three routes for Chinese cargo: the eastern alignment (passing
mainly through central Punjab and Sindh), the central route (passing partly
through Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, and hitherto unconnected parts of Punjab and Sindh)
and the western alignment (passing through the relatively underdeveloped areas
of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan).
The provincial
government claimed that “despite denials the route has been changed to pass
through central Punjab”, Islamabad is primarily focusing on the eastern
corridor.
The districts
along the preferred eastern route are the most densely populated, having large
swathes of land under cultivation and is the main source of production of four
major crops, according to the report. All these factors will increase the
construction cost. By comparison, the western route is thinly populated and the
land is mainly barren.
The comparison
between the three routes implies that the eastern route is economically
unviable, claims the report.
By selecting the
eastern route, the government is trading off today’s security risks with
provincial discord and political instability in the future, the report stated.
However, Iqbal
said that the central route was the shortest one. “The eastern alignment part
of Peshawar-Karachi motorway serves the major markets, industrial areas and
most populated centres of the country,” said Iqbal. He said the CPEC concept is
not to create a “container-in, container-out” economy but rather help make the
country a regional manufacturing hub.
The report argues
that the pre-existing sections are likely to save time and cost are not
tenable, as most sections will have to be widened and re-laid to cater to the
volume and load of the traffic.
CPEC trail
The report finds
the traces of the CPEC in the mid-2000s when the Planning Commission made a
presentation to the then-president Pervez Musharraf and prime minister Shaukat
Aziz. It was then called the “Trade, Energy, Transport and Industrial
Corridor”. The Musharraf Administration had identified the central route for
creating surface transport connectivity between Gwadar and Kashgar in China.
The report also
challenged the government’s claim that it will build all the three alignments.
“The resources to build all three routes are not available and China would
certainly not allocate resources to pander to political disagreements in
Pakistan,” it added.
Published
in The Express Tribune, July 26th, 2015.
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