Struggling ML-1

Pakistan and China are planning to arrange bidding for $10 billion Mainline-1 — the 1,872km Railway Track along with associated facilities from Karachi to Peshawar — next month (December) and have agreed to have its foreign exchange component of $8.4bn fully financed through Renminbi (RMB) based Chinese loan. The bidding would be among the leading Chinese companies to be identified and recommended by the Chinese government. During the meeting of Chinese President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif early this month, both sides agreed to immediately activate their respective teams of technical and financial experts to fast-track progress on the much-delayed project. The Executive Committee approved the project of the National Economic Council (Ecnec) hours before Prime Minister Sharif’s visit to Beijing at a total cost of $9.85bn subject to the recommendation of cost, technical details by the third party consultant and preferably an equity participation financial model.