I made some suggestions earlier that if Chinese companies are making large investments in our country, we have to make it as easy and make the terms as favorable for them as possible, of course, without sacrificing interests of our own country. Since they are investing the money, open bidding can spoil their plans and hurt/damage/slow down the projects in several ways without any special benefit to our country. The objective of open bidding for Pakistanis would be to get a fair deal in terms of setting right cost of the projects paid to Chinese companies. And way this objective should be clearly mentioned to Chinese companies who are making a strategic investment in our country. And some impartial way has to be worked out with Chinese to find the right cost of all the projects.
As I earlier mentioned some fair standards and benchmarks have to be worked out with Chinese to assure that the quality of work, engineering design, minimum damage to environment and other related parameters associated with large infrastructure projects are set in advance and are respected by everyone including the sub-contractors who do some work on these projects.
Chinese will invest in Pakistan only if the projects are beneficial to them in terms of return on investment, benefit to their engineers/companies associated with the projects, any related synergies and goodwill earned.
And the compound opportunity cost to our country and our economy for putting off these projects can be truly monumental, and explosive and we have to take that into account as well. We have already seen the damage to our country's economy due to electricity generation shortages.
This seriously does not mean that we should deter any other country's companies from investing here, and we should for make it as easy for them as could be possible in our capacity, to ask them to work in our country and find out/discuss with them projects that could be mutually beneficial to them and our country.
