Pakistani businessman Asif Minhas and the ambassador of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) in Pakistan Nedim Makarevic signed a document in which the company AM 99 in which 500 square meters of land, near the harbor Gwadar, is given to the state of BiH. Gwadar is a key place on the Chinese-Pakistani Economic Corridor (CPEC). BiH is supposed to construct its own business center on this land.
Minhas, who is in the hotel business, is interested in investing in tourism in BiH, as well as cooperation of the two countries’ private sectors. He will be a panelist of the Eighth Sarajevo Business Forum.
Gwadar is a maritime city in the Pakistani province of Baluchistan, about 120 kilometers away from the border with Iran.
The city has great potential to be the bridge across which all path crisscross. Gwadar has a capacity of 400 million tons per year, which makes it one of the largest harbors in this part of the world. It’s located in deep sea, which means that large tankers can access it without a problem. The entire world is interested in this harbor and one of the most important aspects of it is that China is strategically interested in it.
The government of Pakistan gave to China Gwadar harbor for 40 years of free use, with the caveat that it must be returned to Pakistan afterwards. China is also constructing a road network from the harbor through Pakistan and to Chinese territory as a part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a packet of infrastructure projects worth 54 billion US dollars. The price for constructing the transport infrastructure is around 11 billion USD.
China will construct highways and fast railroads, which will connect cities and parts of Pakistan. Karakoram highway, which is an attraction of its own since it goes through the mountain of the same name that is a part of the Himalayas and is 4,500 meters high and 1,300 kilometers long, will be reconstructed in its entirety.
If all the projects area realized, their worth would be equal to all of the foreign direct investment in Pakistan since 1970. The influence that CPEC would have on Pakistan can be compared to the effect that Marshall’s Plan had on Europe after World War II. Pakistani officials say that CPEC could add between 2 and 5 percentage points to their annual plan up to 2030, alongside with millions of new jobs and the solution to decades-long problems, such as energy reductions.
What Pakistan is counting is help of cheap credits from Chinese banks, such as the Export-Import Bank (Exim), the Chinese Development Bank (CDB), and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC).
Ambassador Makarevic emphasizes the huge opportunities BiH will have with a business center in Gwandar.
“Considering the fact that other ex-Yu republics aren’t represented in Pakistan, BiH can have a clear middleman role in all projects connected to future arrangements relating to CPEC, as well as bilaterally with the PR of China and with Pakistan. This agreement has given us an opportunity to make our business center from which we can act, both logistically and economically-strategically,” Makarevic said.
(Source: Akta.ba)
