ISLAMABAD: China intends to invest as many as $50 billion by 2017 in various sectors of Pakistan's economy, particularly in energy sector to help the country overcome power crisis and help sustainable economic growth, President Pak-China Joint Chamber of Commerce and Industry Shah Faisal Afridi said.
"China has planned to replicate the model of Shanghai Free Trade Zone (SFTZ) by investing $50 billion into a number of projects including coal, solar and wind energy till 2017 under Early Harvest Programme," Faisal said.
These projects would enable Gawadar to create a nexus between Pakistan, Iran, China and Central Asian States that would ultimately generate billions of dollars in revenues along with huge job opportunities in the region.
Afridi said that SFTZ is a perfect model to be implemented at Gwadar, asserting, the SFTZ was first used as a testing ground for a number of economic sectors.
The zone, he said, incorporated numerous relaxations in different sectors, under the FTZ's new capital registration system, foreign investors were no longer required to contribute 15 percent capital within three months and full capital within two years of the establishment of a foreign invested enterprise (FIE).
Meanwhile, official sources said that in addition to invest in power projects, China was also interested in already working in various projects of motorways and railways.
On energy front, Pakistan has been already working to generate about 10400 megawatt electricity with the help of Chinese investment and several projects were already underway to overcome energy crisis.
Beijing has designated three banks including Exim Bank that will provide loans to Chinese companies for investment in power, railway and transport sectors in Pakistan.
Federal government has given advertisements for investment in Gaddani power projects and a competitive bidding process will be initiated for upcoming power plants.
The successful bidders would have to show project feasibility reports to Chinese banks to qualify for the loans, sources said adding Pakistan government would not give any sovereign guarantees to Chinese investors who would install power plants in public-private partnership mode.
China was quite cognizant on the energy problems of Pakistan and that is why it has agreed to invest $34 billion in the energy sector of the country, which is highest Chinese investment in any country.
The Chinese investment would include several projects in Sindh province including transmission of electricity from Thar to Jamshoro after setting up Mitiari transmission line.
In addition imported coal would be utilized in power plants in coastal areas whereas local coal would be utilized for running power plants in Punjab province.
Sources said that vast coal reserves were available in Thar, however due to some quality issues coal would be imported for independent power producers.
For this purpose coal would be imported from South Africa, New Zealand and Indonesia.
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