Gwadar Port fastest and most natural regional trade route: Mushahid Hussain Sayed

Islamabad: Chairman Pakistani Senate’s Defence Committee Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed on Sunday evening called the Gwadar Port the fastest and most natural regional trade route.

Sayed, who is also a senior leader of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), maintained that Gwadar will be the shortest route for trade.

Mushahid Hussain Sayed, the founder of the Pakistan-China Institute, a think-tank that promotes bilateral relations mentioned that the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) was a win-win for the whole region and later the whole world.

He contended that as well as Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan had shown interest in the CPEC.

He added that it would promote economic development for “close to three billion people in Pakistan, Afghanistan, China and the Central Asian republics.

CPEC started in 2013 as a US $ 47 billion bilateral agreement between China and Pakistan to build transport networks, energy projects and special economic zones, financed by China. It has grown to an estimated US $ 62 billion. Now, China and Pakistan want CPEC to be extended to Afghanistan.

The goal of CPEC is both to transform Pakistan’s economy by modernizing its road, rail, air, and energy transportation systems and to connect the deep-sea Pakistani ports of Gwadar and Karachi to China’s Xinjiang province and beyond by overland routes.

Xinjiang borders the countries of Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India, and the ancient Silk Road ran through its territory.

This would reduce the time and cost of transporting goods and energy such as natural gas to China by circumventing the Straits of Malacca and the South China Sea.

CPEC is part of the larger Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to improve connectivity, trade, communication, and cooperation between the countries of Eurasia announced by China in 2013.

CPEC is a massive bilateral project to improve infrastructure within Pakistan for better trade with China and to further integrate the countries of the region.

The project was launched on April 20, 2015 when Chinese President Xi Jinping and then Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif signed 51 agreements and Memorandums of Understanding valued at US $ 46 billion.