Caretaker finance minister leads CPEC review
Caretaker governments are in power in Pakistan, but they, along with the permanent bureaucracy, continue to keep the CPEC train chugging along. Last week, Balochistan Chief Minister Alauddin Marri led a business forum in Quetta that brought together Chinese business...
Concerns over investments expressed at Balochistan forum
Chinese investors and officials continue to hold high-level meetings in Pakistan with the caretaker officials and bureaucrats. At a business forum in Quetta last week, Chinese officials pressed for the removal of red tape hindering investment related to CPEC, stating that investors faced difficulty...
Anti-corruption body orders investigation into Gwadar land allotments
Retired Supreme Court Justice Javed Iqbal, who presently serves as chairman of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), ordered the anti-corruption body to investigate the allotment of thousands of acres of land in a Gwadar-area industrial zone, according to Dunya News. Unnamed NAB officials told...
Protests near Gwadar over electric power blackouts
Protestors on Tuesday blocked the Makran Coastal Highway connecting Gwadar to Karachi as the region faces an electric power blackout due to faults with transmission lines. The protest took place near Ormara, according to DAWN. The coastal town is located...
Leading Gwadar national assembly candidate says people of Gwadar deserve more from CPEC
Aslam Bhootani, the former speaker of the Balochistan assembly, and the favorite candidate for the National Assembly seat from Gwadar, said that the people of Gwadar “have expectations from the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, but unfortunately they are deprived even of drinking...
Tehran warns New Delhi that it will pay a price for Iranian oil import cuts, chides it for slow progress on Chabahar
The Hindu reports that Iranian Deputy Ambassador to India Massoud Rezvania Rahaghi told a gathering in New Delhi: “if India were to replace Iran with countries like Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, U.S. and others for the 10% of its oil demand then it...
Haley presses Modi on Iranian oil, but says Chabahar port ‘has to happen’
Reuters reports that during a visit to New Delhi last month, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley told Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi that the Chabahar “port has to happen and the U.S. is going to work with India...
Chinese Electric Power Companies Press for ‘Revolving Fund’
In 2016, Pakistan approved the creation of a “revolving fund” that would effectively provide a sovereign guarantee for payments to CPEC independent power producers (IPPs). The fund would cover 22 percent of the estimated monthly payments and capacity charges owed to...
World Bank Approves Khyber Pass Economic Corridor Project
The $480 million project includes the construction of the four-lane Peshawar-Torkham Expressway (PTEX) from Peshawar to the Torkham border crossing with Afghanistan and the laying of a fiber optic cable alongside the road. Around 16 percent of the project budget...
Weekly Newsletter: Issues 8 & 9 (June 26, 2018)
This is a review of news and analysis pertaining to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and related regional connectivity and security issues, covering the period of June 11-26, 2018.