IMF director discusses CPEC’s impact on Pakistan’s economy

BEIJING: The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Director, Jihad Azour called on the Minister for Interior and Planning, Development and Reform, Ahsan Iqbal, on Thursday and discussed the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project and its impact on the development of Pakistan and the region.

During a meeting held on the sidelines of a high-level conference on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) here, Iqbal highlighted that through CPEC the government of Pakistan has been able to address the critical bottlenecks of energy and infrastructure in our growth and last year Pakistan had a GDP growth of 5.3 per cent and in 2018 the projections are for 5.8 per cent.

The government has made heavy investments in the energy sector to jump start the growth in the economy. CPEC projects have created thousands of jobs and revived construction and power sector industries.

Pakistan wants strong partnerships with multilateral institutions to build regional connectivity projects as regional connectivity holds the key to regional peace and prosperity.

Pakistan has a youth bulge, therefore the government is equally investing in the areas human resource development and technology.

Jihad acknowledged the efforts of the government for promoting education, infrastructure improvement and poverty alleviation. He highlighted the need to jointly work on the areas for capacity enhancement of local human resource under the BRI initiative.

Ahsan Iqbal highlighted the need to promote business to business cooperation under BRI and overcoming knowledge gaps about the Chinese industry, trade and financial systems by all stakeholders.