ajpirzada
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This is true ONLY IF you count undergoing projects and recently finalized proposals. The Gwadar project is much older than any of these more recent projects, the port and proposals back during the early PPP years had half a billion dollar investment, which was completely neglected in the years between 2009-2011. There were other investments there too that are nowhere to be found in any recent news or this thread such as Saindak copper project.
And if you also count the MoU's approved and finalized, it does not seem that Balochistan has been neglected. Not least in my opinion. Also, I don't see any of these projects further up this economic corridor or the PCEC itself if the investment and infrastructure was not already in place or completed.
By doing this we are going all the way back to Musharraf time which is when investment was first made in Gwadar. From what i can recall, Chinese invested $250million back then. Likewise, an agreement of $350million was signed between China and Pakistan to develop Saindak. There is little else i can recall when it comes to big projects in Balochistan.
But then again doing so is not fair. Are we now adding up all this little investment in Balochistan over the last 10 years and comparing it to these agreements?
It would have been much fairer had the federal government used this borrowed money to increase the pace of the road projects in Balochistan. I have already provided the data and the news articles on the funding short fall NHA and Planning Commission is facing towards completing existing projects. Linking Gwadar to Quetta (onwards to Central Asia) and Ratedero (onwards to upnorth) is much more crucial both for CPEC and soothing Baloch skepticism towards the federation. Punjab government could have borrowed on her own to fund Orange line etc.