ISLAMABAD, Dec 2: Pakistan plans to start two multi-billion-rupee-road projects linking Peshawar to Kabul and onward to the Central Asia as the Afghan government has guaranteed full security in its territory.

Maj-Gen Furrukh Javed, chairman of the National Highway Authority (NHA), said on Monday that two different proposals for the Peshawar-Torkham dual carriageway and Torkham-Kabul highway had been submitted to the federal government for approval.

He was speaking to newsmen at the agreement signing ceremony of the Islamabad-Peshawar Motorway (M-1) project that has been awarded to a consortium of local contractors called the Pakistan Motorway Construction Joint Venture at a cost of Rs11.878 billion.

The chairman said that he had proposed to either immediately repair the existing 43-km road from Peshawar to Torkham at a cost of Rs1.8 billion to reach Kabul through Jalalabad and onwards to the Central Asia.

The second option, he said, was to construct a new, realigned and four-lane dual carriageway at a cost of Rs3.5 billion that could be completed in 30-36 months.

He said that an NHA technical team had recently returned from Kabul and submitted its report to the government to construct the Torkham to Kabul highway. The Afghan government, he told the newsmen, had guaranteed the security.

Once approved by the federal government, the NHA would submit a detailed technical and engineering design of the project to the Afghan administration for implementation. International donors like the Asian Development Bank, Japan Bank for International Cooperation and Chinese banks had assured to finance the two projects, the NHA chief said.

He said the country could have effectively captured the Afghan and Central Asian markets had the two roads, from Quetta to Chaman and from Peshawar to Torkham, been repaired well before the current stable situation in Kabul.

Most of the trade in Afghanistan takes place through Chaman and the Torkham borders.

The NHA chief believes that once the two roads were in good shape, with the completion of two priority sections of the Islamabad-Peshawar Motorway, the country could benefit from the emerging business, reconstruction and trade opportunities in the war-torn neighbouring country.

He told the journalists that the government had paid Rs15.5 billion to a Turkish contractor, Bayinder, for the 30 per cent construction work of the M-1 project while another Rs11.878 billion would be paid to the local contractors under the new contract to complete remaining 70 per cent work. The project would be formally launched by third week of the current month and completed in four years.

Thus, total cost of the project would come to around Rs27 billion.

He deplored that despite a number of out-of-the-way favours, the Turkish firm had not performed according to the pact because it had been given a hefty Rs6 billion in advance, which proved to be a disincentive.

Had the Turkish contractor been allowed to perform the way it was, the total project cost could have touched Rs42 billion, he said. The original cost of the project was estimated at Rs16.8 billion.

He also said the NHA had so far successfully countered all attempts by the Turkish firm to even register its case with the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes because the NHA’s stand was based on strong grounds. He said the stuck up Rs6 billion with the Turkish banks as guarantees might be recovered.