Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif once again invited Turkey to join the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), reported Dawn.
Before this, Sharif had invited Turkey to join CPEC in November of last year to reduce poverty and promote prosperity in the region.
He had suggested months prior that China, Pakistan, and Turkey form a “trilateral arrangement” around CPEC for all three countries to profit from its potential, according to Dawn.
The Prime Minister made these comments while speaking during the fourth Milgem class corvette’s launch at the Karachi Shipyard on Tuesday, where Turkish Vice President Cevdet Yilmaz was also present.
Speaking at the ceremony in Karachi, the PM stated that while Port Qasim was a centre, Gwadar, where the business had “just started,” needed to be connected.
CPEC is a flagship project of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Beijing’s international infrastructure investment programme, known as the BRI, established by China’s Xi Jinping in 2013, was created to rebuild China’s Silk Road, which linked Asia with Africa and Europe to boost trade and economic development, as per CNN.
Each year, the effort has seen billions of dollars poured into infrastructure projects, including the construction of ports from Sri Lanka to West Africa, the paving of motorways from Papua New Guinea to Kenya, and the provision of power and telecoms infrastructure for people in Latin America and Southeast Asia.
The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a multi-billion dollar project, was introduced in 2013 and quickly dubbed the flagship extension of the Belt and Road Initiative.
Pakistanis hoped this new development program would bring change and turn the country into a regional hub.
However, the investment has only had debilitating impact on the South-Asian country.
Balochistan, an impoverished province with significant mineral potential, continued to bear the brunt of the CPEC projects being built on its territory without expecting financial gain. This sense of exclusion has fuelled a mass rebellion in Balochistan against the CPEC.
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