Setting up of cement plant by Qatari company: Red tapism, poor law & order threaten $225 million project

A Qatari company's $225 million plan for setting up a cement plant near Dhabeji is in jeopardy owing to the inordinate delay in process of legal documentation for the project by the concerned official and deteriorating law and order situation in the country.
Official sources in Planning and Development department told Business Recorder on Saturday that delaying tactics were being used in processing the legal documents by concerned officials.
Moreover, they said, the poor law and order situation has threatened the project as the company seemed disinterested to invest in the current scenario of law and order. However, the representatives of the firm have assured the government that their investment plan would not be affected by poor law and order situation, they said.
Without naming the Qatar firm, the sources said that Sindh government received an Expression of Interest some ten months back for investing in setting up cement plant at Dhabeji. A high-level delegation of the firm has called on the then Chief Minister Sindh Dr Arbab Ghulam Rahim in March 2007 at Islamabad, where Arbab had asked the delegation to work jointly with Board of Investment and Planning Commission to eliminate the financial and legal hurdles in the plan.
Arbab also assured the company to make the requisite land available and agreed to grant four hundred acres of land for 99 years at the rate of Rs 0.25 million per acre at undeveloped Dhabeji near Port Qasim.
To finalise the matter, two meetings took place in office of Additional Chief Secretary and General Administration Department, which were attended by the secretaries of Law Department, Mines and Mineral Development Department and Land Utilisation Department to finalise a draft lease deed.
Thereafter, the government decided to provide 400 acres land which would also earn Rs 100 million revenue for provincial exchequer besides bringing an investment of about $225 billion but this project was in doldrums owing to indifferent attitude of the concerned official toward finalisation of the legal process, the sources added.