ISLAMABAD -  The M-4 Motorway, linking Faisalabad with Khanewal, would be completed by July 2018, said National Highway Authority (NHA) member Mansoor Ahmed Sirohey on Friday.

He told journalists that the Asian Development Bank (ADB) is the leading financer in M-4 Motorway, as the bank disbursed $170 million (77 percent share of the project) in 2009 for construction of a 58km four-lane motorway M-4, connecting Faisalabad to Gojra (section I). This section was completed in December 2014.

Similarly, the ADB would provide 56.15 percent share of the funding of the section II of the M-4, which will construct the 62km four-lane access controlled motorway connecting Gojra and Shorkot. Meanwhile, government of the United Kingdom would provide grant of 29.02 percent and Pakistan would release share of 14.83 percent. The project is expected to complete by 2018, he added.

Sirohey said that contract for section-III of the motorway linking Shorkot to Khanewal has been signed and construction is expected to commence in December 2016. The ADB noted that M-4 Motorway in Punjab, linking Faisalabad with Khanewal, will cut travel time and support the government's broader goal of improved investment and trade flows along the country's vital north-south corridor route. Once fully completed, the M-4 Motorway will provide a faster, safer, more cost-effective north-south route to the currently overburdened national highway 5 and other existing narrow and congested routes.

The primary north-south transport corridor in Pakistan runs from Torkham on the northern border with Afghanistan and passes through primary production and population centres such as Peshawar, Islamabad, Faisalabad, Multan, and Khanewal, before reaching the port city of Karachi in the south. The corridor serves the economy of an area that accounts for 80 percent to 85 percent of the country’s GDP and in the regional context, forms an integral part of the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation (CAREC) corridors 5 and 6 after Pakistan's accession to the CAREC Programme in 2010.