Control and management of the 392-km section of the Peshawar-Karachi Motorway connecting the Pakistani cities of Sukkur and Multan was officially handed over to Pakistan last week. China State Construction Engineering Corporation built the highway, which runs north-south through the center of the country, as part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project, one of the premiere projects of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin gave an idea yesterday of the physical economic benefits which come from simply building a modern highway in this country.
The highway reduces travel time between Sukkur and Multan from 11 hours to around 4, but it has also brought development to the area surrounding the highway, above and beyond the approximately 29,000 local jobs created in building it. As part of constructing the highway, the Chinese company also built school buildings, roads, and bridges, and dug wells and irrigation works in villages along the route. Wang also described that the project runs through major agricultural production areas in Pakistan, and therefore is giving “a direct boost to socioeconomic development along its route.”
