ISLAMABAD: The coronavirus pandemic has resulted in a delay of at least eight weeks in the implementation of the multibillion-dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) projects, a senior government functionary said on Friday, as he hoped that the problem would be fixed through effective mobilization of resources.
Thousands of Chinese workers have returned to Pakistan through special flights to resume work on different infrastructure projects after spending the Chinese new year holidays in their hometowns.
“We are estimating a maximum eight weeks of delay in different development projects due to the coronavirus pandemic,” Dr. Liaqat Ali Shah, CPEC’s Project Director, told Arab News on Friday.
The Chinese workers, who have been dealing with different CPEC projects, were stuck in different cities of their country when Beijing suspended the international flight operation in January due to the spread of the virus.
China has already developed a “double quarantine policy” for all its engineers and other workers in Pakistan.
“The Chinese travelling to Pakistan spend fourteen days in quarantine in China, and then they are also placed in quarantine for another fourteen days in Pakistan,” Shah said, adding that “effective measures” were in place to stem the spread of the virus in Pakistan's cities.
The project director said that the Chinese companies would place their workforce in quarantine at their respective project sites. “We don’t allow them to mix with the local population,” he said.
About the number of Chinese returning to Pakistan since February, he said that they were “in the thousands,” though he did not have the exact statistics.
Pakistan and China signed the $46 billion CPEC agreement in 2015 which later expanded to at least $62 billion. The infrastructure development projects include roads, railways, seaport, pipelines, industrial units and airports.
China plans to link its landlocked western region of Xinjiang to the Arabian Sea through the corridor project.
Shah said that Pakistan was mobilizing all the available resources to cover the time gap of eight weeks in different projects. “The work on all projects, including the transmission lines, roads and hospitals, is now in full swing,” he said.
The government has also constituted joint working groups and task forces to expand the scope of development projects by negotiating new schemes with the Chinese government.
In the next phase, Pakistan is planning to include development of agriculture, science and technology and petroleum sectors to boost its fragile economy and create job opportunities for both skilled and unskilled labor.
“At the moment, different studies are underway to include new projects related to agriculture and oil refineries in CPEC,” Shah said while dispelling the impression of any undue slowdown in the development schemes.
Coronavirus delays CPEC projects for about eight weeks — official
https://arab.news/mecav
Coronavirus delays CPEC projects for about eight weeks — official
- Says thousands of Chinese workers have returned to Pakistan to resume work
- Chinese workers dealing with corridor projects in Pakistan are quarantined at their project sites for fourteen days
Rating firm S&P says it won’t rush Iran war downgrades, sees risks for countries like Pakistan
- Agency says it is monitoring indebted energy importers as higher oil prices strain finances
- Gulf economies seen better placed to weather shock, though Bahrain flagged as vulnerable
LONDON: S&P Global said it would not make any knee-jerk sovereign rating cuts following the outbreak of war in the Middle East, but warned on Thursday that soaring oil and gas prices were putting a number of already cash-strapped countries at risk.
The firm’s top analysts said in a webinar that the conflict, which has involved US and Israeli strikes against Iran and Iranian strikes against Israel, US bases and Gulf states, was now moving from a low- to moderate-risk scenario.
Most Gulf countries had enough fiscal buffers, however, to weather the crisis for a while, with more lowly rated Bahrain the only clear exception.
Qatar’s banking sector could also struggle if there were significant deposit outflows in reaction to the conflict, although there was no evidence of such strains at the moment, they said.
“We don’t want to jump the gun and just say things are bad,” S&P’s head global sovereign analyst, Roberto Sifon-Arevalo, said.
The longer the crisis was prolonged, though, “the more difficult it is going to be,” he added.
Sifon-Arevalo said Asia was the second-most exposed region, due to many of its countries being significant Gulf oil and gas importers.
India, Thailand and Indonesia have relatively lower reserves of oil, while the region also had already heavily indebted countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka whose finances would be further hurt by rising energy prices.
“We are closely monitoring these (countries) to see how the credit stories evolve,” Sifon-Arevalo said.
