ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s experts expect the port city of Gwadar being developed under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) to become an energy hub with a technology-based development vision and a community-centric social development approach.
In a recent policy dialogue on Gwadar organized by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), an Islamabad-based think-tank, the experts emphasized the need to further focus on expanding the horizon of a green CPEC for energy generation and sustainable technology-based development.
Launched in 2013, CPEC, a flagship project of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), is a corridor linking Pakistan’s southwestern Gwadar port with Kashgar in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, highlighting energy, transport, and industrial cooperation.
Speaking at the event, Abid Qaiyum Suleri, executive director of the SDPI, said that Gwadar has the potential to become a mix to bring together all traditional and renewal energy generation projects.
Since the international community has demanded a three-fold increase in renewable energy share by 2030 at the 28th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP28, in Dubai, Pakistan is seeking renewable energy support from China to tap its solar and offshore wind energy potential, Suleri said.
He called for discussions about working on this end holistically, particularly its consumption aspects, along with an efficient utilization of infrastructure.
Experts at the seminar urged a focus on the socio-economic development of the Gwadar area, with policy reforms towards sustainable growth.
Highlighting the need for the reform in key sectors, Xiang Yang, director of the China Study Center at Pakistan’s National University of Sciences and Technology, urged efforts to improve regulations, taxation regime, and governance mechanisms to facilitate investment.
There have been many positive achievements in Gwadar under CPEC’s framework, including an operational port, modernized infrastructure, road network, and an under-construction state-of-the-art international airport, Eram Ashraf, an international relations expert, told Xinhua after the seminar.
“Now, we have 10 years of successful experience of CPEC to learn, and there is a long way ahead to go,” Ashraf said.
For sustainable development, the policymaking has to be more and more inclusive with all the stakeholders on board, the expert said, adding that it should focus on the input and the well-being of the local people of Gwadar.
