Islamabad: Pakistan China Economic Corridor (CPEC) has brought immense opportunities for all Sectors of Pakistan that eventually help to decline the poverty scale of Pakistan. New $60 billion developments likely to benefit not only the overall economy but also micro- business sectors, a new report says.
The report, entitled “The Web of Transport Corridors in South Asia”, published by the Asian Development Bank, the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development, the Japan International Cooperation Agency, and the World Bank, discusses several economic corridors including CPEC.
The report notes that the many transport corridors proposed across Asia would cost trillions of dollars to implement, far exceeding the financing resources available. Hence, countries need to prioritize the most promising corridors that will deliver the expected transformative impacts for their economies and people. Engineering designs and geopolitical considerations could be important, but the sound economic analysis is the key to designing truly successful corridors, the report argues.
“The upcoming Khyber Pass Economic Corridor project is a positive example, where trade facilitation and the development of local economic activities are explicitly integrated in the design of the project”, said Illango Patchamuthu, World Bank Country Director for Pakistan.
The report also reviews the international advancement of the economic corridor has been built from the Pacific ocean belt of Japan till the recent mass transit system of Europe. the report further analyzes the impacts of the Golden Quadrilateral highway system in India to sort out the merits and its outcome of a better economy and finds positive effects, including higher economic activity and better (non-farm) jobs for women.
However, air pollution rose in parallel and gains in household consumption were not equally shared across connected districts. Appraisal simulations for CPEC and the Kolkata-Dhaka corridor suggest that complementary measures are needed to improve local conditions that in turn will create formal jobs and generate tax revenues that could pay for corridor investments.
