Building confidence for CPEC’s success
The first unit of the Suki Kinari Hydropower project, one of the many power projects being built by China in Mansehra, was connected to the national grid in the middle of last month, marking yet another milestone in the bilateral economic cooperation under the framework of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). The project is expected to provide more than one million Pakistani households with clean electricity each year in the future and contribute to Pakistan’s adjustment of the national power energy structure. On becoming fully functional later this year, it will generate some 3.2 billion units of clean electricity annually, replacing 1.3m tonnes of coal and reducing 2.5m tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per year. China has invested a total of $25.4bn in direct investment with several other projects worth billions of dollars in different stages of planning or execution, creating 155,000 direct jobs, building 510km of motorways and expressways, adding more than 8,200MW of new power capacity, and building 886km of core power transmission grid to Pakistan in the first phase of the Corridor initiative.