ISLAMABAD: Century Steel (Pvt) Ltd, a Chinese company will invest $360 million in the Rashakai Special Economic Zone in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
CPEC Project Director Dr Liaquat Ali Shah said this while talking to Business Recorder on Wednesday.
He said that all the utility facilities including electricity, gas, water, and others for Rashakai Special Economic Zone would be completed at the end of this year.
He said that in the first phase, Chinese iron and steel conglomerate became the first foreign enterprise to establish its plant in the Rashakai Special Economic Zone under the CPEC with a planned investment of $50 million.
He said that industrial relocation to Pakistan under the CPEC is our policy and other foreign companies are ready to invest in Pakistan.
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The CPEC project director said that 40 acres land has been allocated to Century Steel Ltd owned by Fuzhou Julitaihe International Company of China in Rashakai Special Economic Zone, which owns steel mills in Indonesia, Myanmar, Cambodia, and Ethiopia with a net capacity of 3,000 million tonnes of iron and steel products.
He said that the Rashakai SEZ comes under the CPEC umbrella and is the first industrial cooperation project between China and Pakistan.
He said that the 1,000-acre zone will create 200,000 direct and indirect jobs and is expected to attract Rs347 billion investment.
According to a statement of the Board of Investment (BoI), having the capacity to produce 0.25 million tonnes of steel products per annum at the proposed plant in Rashakai, the project will consume 45MW of electricity and create job opportunities for 1,000 employees directly or indirectly.
The BoI said 10MW of electricity at the economic zone had already been arranged through 11kV feeder, while work was in progress on the 160MW, 132 kV grid station.
Due to its location on the motorway and proximity to the Torkham border and Central Asia, the Rashakai SEZ is expected to be the game-changer for Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.
Answering a question, CPEC Project Director Dr Liaquat Ali Shah said that the first phase of Allama Iqbal Industrial City, Faisalabad Special Economic Zone (SEZ) of Punjab under the CPEC has been completed.
He said that development work on Dhabeji Special Economic Zone (DSEZ) in Thatta and Bostan Industrial Zone situated at district Pishin Balochistan is continuing and all utility facilities (gas, electricity, water, access road, security etc) would be completed at the end of this year.
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Answering another question about agriculture sector, Dr Shah said that we are focusing on development work on two sectors, first industrial sector and second is the agriculture sector.
He said that we have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with China on agriculture sector.
“We have prepared an Action Plan on agriculture sector and shared it with the Chinese government. We will discuss the Action Plan in the next Joint Coordination Committee (JCC) meeting, which is expected in this month (August),” the CPEC project director said.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021