ISLAMABAD
The second meeting of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor Joint Working Group on Transport Infrastructure was held in Beijing during August 20-21 and concluded its deliberations on Thursday.
Pakistan delegation was headed by Secretary Ministry of Communications Babar Yaqoob and the Chinese delegation was led by Director General Department of International Cooperation Ministry of Transport, Yang Zan. Both deliberated upon various projects of CPEC transport infrastructure and achieved substantial progress ahead of the forthcoming meeting of Joint Coordination Committee to take place towards the end of the month.
According to a message received here, the two sides undertook a comprehensive review of early harvest projects of transport sector and expressed satisfaction particularly over the progress made in the road, rail and port sectors.
The CPEC transport planning, roadmap of future work and port related matters also came under discussion.
The discussion focused on early harvest projects particularly KKH, Karachi- Lahore motorway, Orange Line, Gwadar port related projects, Eastbay Expressway and capacity building and training. The Chinese side while discussing the CPEC transport planning presented a ‘specialized study on transport planning of CPEC’ and evinced interest in sharing Vision 2025 - recently unveiled by the Ministry of Planning Development and Reform in Pakistan - as reference for benchmarking of CPEC projects.
Secretary Communications Yaqoob shared the progress of CPEC projects reflecting the milestones achieved so far and emphasized early implementation of projects by signing framework agreements.
He also highlighted vision 2025 in terms of its relation to CPEC and hoped that the input provided during the deliberations would go a long way in making the next JCC a fruitful exercise. Both sides agreed to jointly carry out capacity building training courses both in Pakistan and China during 2015-17. They also agreed on the road map of future work on various projects.