Will China’s belt and road projects in cash-strapped Pakistan lose momentum as PM Shehbaz Sharif seeks IMF financial support?

Pakistan’s new coalition government is struggling to secure finance for the initiative as negotiations with IMF continue

Since 2015 Beijing financed more than US$25 billion worth of power generation plants, mass transit systems and motorways in Pakistan, and expanded Gwadar port

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Gwadar port, which provides China with its sole overland connection with the Indian Ocean via CPEC infrastructure in Pakistan. Photo: Xinhua

Published: 6:17pm, 18 May 2022Updated: 6:38pm, 18 May 2022

Work on China’s US$65 billion belt and road programme in Pakistan looks set to progress at only a modest pace in coming years because Islamabad is struggling to stay solvent, officials and analysts said.

The recently elected coalition government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif began a week of negotiations with the International Monetary Fund in Doha on Wednesday over the terms of an extended balance of payments support programme.

Sharif has already been told by Pakistan’s close allies and major bilateral financiers China, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that further financial assistance is contingent on Islamabad re-entering the IMF programme, which was suspended in March.

Against this economic backdrop, analysts said Islamabad will for the next couple of years lack the resources to accelerate work on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a showcase programme of the Belt and Road Initiative.

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Since the CPEC was launched in 2015 when Shehbaz’s brother Nawaz Sharif was prime minister, Beijing has financed more than US$25 billion worth of power generation plants, mass transit systems and motorways in Pakistan, and expanded the Chinese-operated port of Gwadar.

Will China’s belt and road projects in cash-strapped Pakistan lose momentum as PM Shehbaz Sharif seeks IMF financial support?

Pakistan’s new coalition government is struggling to secure finance for the initiative as negotiations with IMF continue Since 2015 Beijing financed more than US$25 billion worth of power generation plants, mass transit systems and motorways in Pakistan, and expanded Gwadar port

Pakistan’s new coalition government is struggling to secure finance for the initiative as negotiations with IMF continue

Since 2015 Beijing financed more than US$25 billion worth of power generation plants, mass transit systems and motorways in Pakistan, and expanded Gwadar port