Pakistan to seek Gulf investment in China $62bn trade corridor

SLAMABAD: Pakistan will invite Gulf states to invest in a $62 billion Chinese trade corridor which is meant to enhance Beijing’s global utreach, officials in Islamabad said.

Pakistan’s new Prime Minister mran Khan will meet leaders f Saudi Arabia and the UAE on is visit to the region, starting on Tuesday, diplomats said.

“He will seek investment in he project... we want to lessen conomic dependence on China,” a akistani minister said. China has een building an ambitious road and ea route through Pakistan to reach markets in the Middle East, Europe nd Africa since 2015.

Beijing has pledged a $62 billion nvestment in the China-pakistan conomic Corridor (CPEC) project which is part of President Xi Jinping’s agship “Belt and Road” initiative.

But there are worries in Pakistan hat the project will embroil the ountry in a Chinese debt trap.

Khan, on his first international isit since taking office last month, was accompanied by Finance Minister Asad Umar and Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi t a time when the country is trying o avert a balance of currency crisis temming from a large current ccount deficit.

Analysts say a fresh bailout ackage from the International Monetary Fund, which would be its 3th since late 1980s, is inevitable.

But Umar recently said an IMF escue was a “fallback option” and hat the government was exploring ther avenues for assistance, which was broadly interpreted as Islamabad eeking help from China and Saudi Arabia, both of which have provided ast loans in the past.

“The PM will call on King Salman nd hold a bilateral meeting with the Crown Prince,” Pakistan’s foreign ffice said. “The two leaders will iscuss issues of bilateral interest.” n 2014, six months after Pakistan btained its last IMF bailout, Saudi Arabia loaned Pakistan $1.5 billion, which the government used to trengthen its rupee currency.

Pakistan’s current account deficit widened 43 per cent to $18 billion in he fiscal year, while the fiscal deficit as ballooned to 6.6 per cent of the conomy.