Asian Development Bank (ADB) has recently approved financing of 770 million dollars for the National Highway Development Sector Investment Programme (NHDSIP), which focuses on consolidating existing assets and providing linkages from the main road system to remote areas and sub-regional border crossings.
National Highway Authority (NHA) Chairman Major General Farrukh Javed stated this while talking to newsmen after his presentation about NHA at the Faisalabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
He said the main areas for improvement/upgrading were completion of the Makran Coastal Road, Lyari Expressway, Indus Highway Phase III, Gwadar-Turbat-Hoshab section, World Bank financed N5 highway improvement, Multan-Muzaffargarh, Kuchlak-Zhob, Karachi-Hub-Kakar, and Hub-Uthal N25.
He said that Pakistan was ideally located to act as a hub for sub-regional transport and to take advantage of the sub-region's rapidly improving political situation for the development of transit and cross-border trade and commerce.
Pakistan's road corridors offer the shortest route to the sea by several hundred kilometres for landlocked Afghanistan, Central Asia, Xinjiang province of the People's Republic China, and parts of the Russian Federation.
However, physical, institutional and other constraints currently prevent Pakistan from taking full advantage of its location. The potential for increased trade through improved trade facilitation, rehabilitated transport links, efficient cross-border movements, and increased efficiency at ports is highly significant for the Pakistan's economy, he added.
In addition, he mentioned that under the transit trade agreement with Afghanistan, in place for more than a decade, approximately 88 percent of Afghan exports and 47 percent imports passed through Pakistan.
The NHDSIP provided Pakistan with an opportunity to play a catalytic role in the development of such transport initiatives, thereby enhancing sub-regional co-operation in addition to promoting its domestic development, he added.
About M-4, the NHA chairman said the work on this 184km long stretch was expected to start within next 5 to 6 months, adding we had not yet decided that it would be undertaken on the basis of BOT or Public Private Partnership (PPP).
"We are still working to decide that if M-4 should be of 4 or 6 lane Motorway", he said and added the technical alignment of this motorway had been finalised and work for the demarcation of the land started. However, he said, it had been decided that all flyovers would be of six lanes, adding the M-4 motorway was expected to be completed within next 3-4 years.
He said there were five million vehicles plying on roads and 80 percent passengers prefer to travel by roads while rest of 20 percent travelling by air or by train.
Similarly, 95 percent traffic of freight vehicles was also canalised through highways and motorways, he said, adding that roads were the only channel, which was available to 100 percent population of the country.
Major General Farrukh Javed said Pakistan had embarked upon various gigantic projects of highway construction and thus linking Pakistan with central Asian states. He hoped that after the accomplishment of those projects, Pakistan's trade with neighbouring countries would flourish manifold.
He said the construction of 75km-long road from Torkham to Jalalabad was being constructed.