‘Pak, China to minimize adverse impact of COVID-19’

DM Monitoring

BEIJING: The spread of COVID-19 World over posing severe challenges to economic development, and it might affect to China-Pakistan Economy Corridor (CPEC) as well.
A report published in China Economic Net on Thursday says after arduous efforts, the Chinese people have just come out of the most difficult period and are accelerating the restoration of normal production and daily life.What kind of impact will this pandemic have on China’s economy and Pakistan’s economy yet to be determined.
This to be examined, to what extent the CPEC, will suffer from these effects? What are the implications and what may be the consequences?It is important to pay attention to this as CPEC is of extraordinary importance not only for China but for Pakistan. From 2015 till now, there has been a unanimous opinion in Pakistan that CPEC is very useful to Pakistan. Therefore, any adverse impact on such a proven project would be of great concern to both countries. When the Corona virus outbreak began to spread in China, it was also linke to the operation of CPEC in Pakistan. As many Chinese citizens working in different places of CPEC traveled to Wuhan, China to celebrate their New Year’s celebrations, after Wuhan’s lockdown, it was impossible for these Chinese engineers, experts and management people to return to Pakistan on time. So it was difficult for many enterprises, business centers and factories to run smoothly. This situation was seen by both China and Pakistan with great concern, as 100,000 to 15,000 Chinese engineers, experts and management staff were concerned with the CPEC.It was necessary to fill this gap.