NIP discouraging foreign investment in Karachi?

The industrial investment at the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) located at Bin Qasim Industrial Area (BQIP), Karachi, operated by National Industrial Park Pvt Ltd (NIP) has come to a standstill due to unavailability of utilities such as electricity, gas and water promised under the Special Economic Zone Act 2016, well-informed sources told Business Recorder. Last week, Al Futtaim Motors backed out from its $ 150 million investment in BQIP to manufacture Renault cars. Instead, it decided to move its location to FIEDMC (Faisalabad Special Economic Zone) due to an 8-month delay by NIP Board of Directors to approve its land allotment.
The sources said, at least three other investments totaling Rs 6.0 billion in BQIP, namely Tecno Auto Glass Ltd (to produce auto glass under Japanese joint venture), Hi-Tech Auto Parts (to produce alloy wheels) and Horizon Steel (to produce steel bars) are running from pillar to post to get the required utilities. Under Clause 14 of SEZ Rules 2013, every Zone Operator (in this case, NIP) is obligated to provide adequate infrastructure including electricity, natural gas, water, sewage, drainage etc etc to Zone Enterprises operating in the respective SEZ.
The sources said due to delay in decision-making by the NIP Board of Directors, the BQIP has failed to set up facilities to provide the promised utilities to the plants being setup. Three plants require a total load of 10 Megawatts by April 2018 and this was intimated to NIP at the time of allotments in March 2017. As of now, NIP does not have any surplus electricity available and there seems to be no activity on its arrangement despite repeated letters, reminders and follow-ups with its Chairman Mohammad Afzal.
The investors at BQIP argue that in case NIP is unable to provide utilities, they should be given NoCs to obtain the connections from K-Electric and Sui Southern Gas Company, even though it will be at a much higher cost and will take around 10 months. There is no response from NIP on the repeated requests from these investors.
Unconfirmed reports suggest that power policy for BQIP has been on the agenda of the NIP BoD meetings since August 2017. However, the Board had not taken it up for deliberations till the filing of this report. The price of BQIP land, at Rs 26 million per acre, is almost 4 times higher than price of Rs 6.6 million per acre at FIEDMC.