BEIJING – A Chinese foreign ministry’s spokesperson Monday said that lessthan 20 percent of current projects under China Pakistan Economic Corridor(CPEC) were using the Chinese loans and more than 80 percent of them weredirectly invested by China or using Chinese grants.
“Only less than 20 percent of current CPEC projects are using Chinese loansand more than 80 percent of them are directly invested by China or usingChinese grants,” Lu Kang said during his regular briefing held here.
Rejecting impression that Chinese loans were adding to Pakistan’s debtproblems, he observed that carrying out major projects with theinternational financing was a global practice and it was also an effectiveapproach for the developing countries to break the financial bottleneck andexpedite their economic growth.
He said that the projects being completed under the CPEC, a flagshipproject of Belt and Road Initiative did not add burden to Pakistan’s debtissue, adding, rather it strengthened the economy.
The spokesperson remarked that the CPEC was a symbol of China-Pakistancooperation in the new era and termed it an important pilot project of theBRI announced by Chinese President Xi Jinping five years ago.
Explaining further, he said, it had been more than five years since theCPEC started and added, now there were 22 early harvest projects creatingtens of thousands of local jobs and satisfying electricity needs of 8.6million households there.
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Lu Kang said the CPEC had greatly improved Pakistan’s infrastructure andpower supply and it was welcomed by the Pakistani government and its people.
The spokesperson advised the critics of the CPEC if they really payattention to Pakistan’s development, they should actually visit Pakistanand learn what the local people thought of the CPEC and then made theirjudgment on China-Pakistan cooperation based on the facts.
According to analysts, in the past five years, 11 projects had beencompleted under the CPEC, and 11 were in the construction stage. The totalinvestment of these 22 projects was about $18.9 billion.
Furthermore, China had become the largest trading partner of Pakistan andthe biggest source of foreign direct investment, and the bilateral tradecrossed $20 billion last year.
