A meeting of the cabinet committee, chaired by Planning Minister Asad Umer, reviewed the pace of implantation on ongoing CPEC projects of roads infrastructure and in energy sector. The meeting also discussed the possibility of performing the groundbreaking ceremony of the recently approved by ECNEC $.6.8 billion railway track upgradation and refurbishment mainline ML-1 project. For this mega project, former Planning Minister in the last PML-N government Ahsan Iqbal had agreed to an estimated cost of $9.2 billion, without fulfilling the mandatory procedural requirements, including hiring the services of a reputed consultancy firm and third party pre-audit. The highly inflated cost of ML-1had invited sharp criticism from multilateral lending agencies including the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, raising concern about financial viability of the project and huge debt repayment issues for cash strapped economy of Pakistan. The present government fulfilled the required mandatory procedural requirements to ensure transparency and financial viability of 1872 kilometer long Peshawar to Karachi railway track upgradation project. The necessary drill reduced the cost by $2.4 billion, although the reduced cost estimate also includes setting up of a Dry-port at Havelian. Railway track up-gradation and running state-of-the-art locomotives on it was long overdue in view of its strategic and transportation importance. Large part of the existing track is medium gauge and bridges on it have outlived their utility. Its modernization was long overdue. But over the past four decades building road infrastructure had got priority over railway track up-gradation. Consequently,the number of passengers had decreased and quantum of goods transportation shrank, substantially swelling railway losses. In the previous government railway ministry had indicated it inability to shoulder the liability of foreign debt which will be acquired for the project. This was one of the reasons of delay in the preparation of PC-1 for ML-1. In majority of countries of the world, goods trains make this public utility organisation profit earning as passenger traffic incur losses. In Pakistan road transport lifts bulk of the goods trade. Hence railway has become huge losses incurring entity. It will take a number of years when economy will break the recessionary cycle and special economic zones will become functional, leading to substantial increase in goods transportation by freight trains. Over the past 12 years locomotive factory has become almost non-operational and is plagued by redundancy.
