Govt likely to dissolve China Pakistan Economic Corridor Authority due to its poor performance

ISLAMABAD - The government is likely to dissolve China Pakistan Economic Corridor Authority (CPECA) owing to its poor performance and duplication of work, it was learnt reliably here.
The Ministry of Planning, Development and Special Initiatives will ask Prime Minister of Pakistan Shahbaz Sharif for the dissolution of CPECA which has become a white elephant, official source told The Nation.
The source said that the performance of the Authority was worse since its inception and didn’t contribute anything to CPEC progress. The CPEC authority was established by the PTI government and the reason behind its establishment as stated by the movers of the idea was “The Authority to accelerate the pace of CPEC activities, would be responsible for planning, facilitating, coordinating, monitoring and evaluating to ensure implementation of all activities related to CPEC”
But instead of pushing CPEC, the authority had brought the multi billion dollars corridor project to almost stand still, the source added. Instead of facilitating the investment in the country, the CPEC Authority drove out the investors, the source claimed. There are six proposed sections of the CPECA and they were proposed to hire six members to head each section. The sections are Infrastructure and Communication, Energy, Industry, Agriculture, Social etc which are the duplication of the Planning Commission. If they already have the same sections in the Planning Commission, then why extra burden in the shape of CPECA should be incurred on the national exchequer for duplication of work? the source questioned.
The source said that it has been decided after the dissolution of CPECA, the government will reactivate the CPEC Secretariat under the planning ministry to oversee the work on corridor projects.
Under the auspices of the CPEC secretariat the corridor project had achieved several milestones and huge investment of more than $25bn was channelized. On the other hand no major investment was realized under CPECA, the source said. You just take the example of ML-I project which has achieved no progress during the previous three and a half years. CPECA has completely failed to kick start the ML-I project, the source said. Same thing was done to Special Economic Zones (SEZs) by the CPECA. It was supposed the CPEC economic zones would be ready by 2020 but the target was not achieved either, the source maintained.
Another source in the ministry claimed that even some key ministers of the PTI government including the then Planning Minister Asad Umar was not in favour of the establishment CPECA.

| After dissolution of CPECA, government will reactivate CPEC Secretariat
under Planning Ministry to oversee work on corridor projects

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