ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister Planning and Development Asad Umar on Wednesday said there is nothing secret in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and the government of Pakistan has even shared the information with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Addressing a press conference along with Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on CPEC Khalid Mansoor, Umar said that when the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) formed government in 2018 and went to the IMF, the global lender also asked for information about the projects under the CPEC, which were provided to them by the government of Pakistan.
While acknowledging that Pakistan had a debt servicing and debt sustainability challenge, he stressed Pakistan did not have a “China debt” problem pertaining to loan financing from the CPEC projects.
The minister said the information was shared “before as well” and that it was being repeated due to the report being highlighted in the media. “Debt to China is only 10 percent of Pakistan’s general debt.”
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On the concern regarding Pakistan’s debt reaching a “dangerous level”, he said Chinese debt comprised only 10 percent of the country’s general debt including domestic and foreign and 26 percent of its external debt.
He said that 74 percent of Pakistan’s loans were received from rest of the world mostly from the Western world and multilateral agencies. He said Pakistan’s debt sustainability challenges were not due to Chinese loans but the country’s own internal issues.
He said the government of Pakistan gives sovereign guarantee to all the foreign-funded projects and all the Independent Power Producers (IPPs), whether they were from China, the US or any other country.
Umar was responding to a recent report by a US-based international development research lab, AidData that was critical of the CPEC.
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He recalled that the report had raised four main issues about the CPEC: lack of transparency, imposition of secret loans on Pakistan, loans being expensive, and Pakistan’s debt rising to a dangerous level because of the CPEC.
He further said information on the CPEC projects had been shared a number of times and that the Senate and the National Assembly committees had even had their queries answered. “Parliamentary oversight is present,” he said.
Umar said that data on energy and power projects was available with the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA) and that the government had provided information about the CPEC to the IMF at the start of its programme.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021