The minister expressed these views while speaking at the launching ceremony of CPEC Quarterly Magazine and website of the CPEC Centre of Excellence here at Ministry of Planning, Development and Reforms. He said that any country can join the CPEC to ensure peace and development in the region.
About energy projects, he said that there are 80 percent energy projects of a total of CPEC projects. He said that in the history of Pakistan, a large amount of $35 billion investment has been made in energy sector under the CPEC projects. He said that industry would flourish due to energy projects and the people would get electricity. He said Pakistan would make a centre of industries of South Asia after completing next phase of CPEC.
Ahsan Iqbal said that the importance and value of Thar coal is more than combined oil of Saudi Arabia and Iran. He said that China is investing in coal mining and Thar coal. He said that a total of $5 billion investment has been finalize so far in Thar coal. He said that if the CPEC projects go to China's interests, Pakistan will also benefit from them.
He said, "It is time that we should adopt the politics of economic growth rather than the politics of fighting and weakening the path of development." The minister said no one should consider the corridor as a security project. He said, "Together we can bring change in the lives of people in this part of the world where there is still extreme poverty."
He said that CPEC will have a great impact on socioeconomic development of the country.
The minister said that CPEC is a vision of achieving better quality of life to people of the region who have paid a heavy price of conflicts in the last several decades. He added, "These conflicts denied us opportunity to exploit full potential of the region."
Speaking on the occasion, Chinese Ambassador Yao Jing said that China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is the project of bilateral cooperation between the two countries.
He said that CPEC is result of joint efforts of Pakistan and China to materialize the goal of sustainable development.
The ambassador congratulated the CPEC Centre of Excellence over launching of CPEC Quarterly Magazine and website and termed it as a good step towards provision of awareness to the people about updates, opportunities and activities with regard to the CPEC project.
Meanwhile, second meeting of the Coordination Committee with additional chief secretaries/secretaries (development) of all provinces as well as federating units was held on Thursday at Ministry of Planning, Development and Reform under the chairmanship of Federal Secretary PDR Shoaib Ahmed Siddique.
The purpose of this meeting was to discuss the issues related to development projects and to devise effective coordination between federal and provincial governments on projects monitoring, evaluation fund releases and timely completion of the projects.