CHINA’S President Xi Jinping is scheduled to arrive in Pakistan in the next few days and announce a set of projects in power and communications infrastructure totalling almost $50bn. Details of the projects were provided by the Planning Commission to a number of assembled delegates from the media and assorted think tanks at an open event, and they make for an impressive list.

If all of what is described indeed materialises, we can say that the Chinese are offering an intervention in our infrastructure development to rival what the Americans did in return for our accession to the Indus Waters Treaty. Recall that as part of surrendering our rights to the waters in three eastern rivers, the Americans had offered to build a vast hydrological infrastructure including storages such as Mangla and Tarbela, as well as canals and associated power generation and transmission systems. The investments made under that programme not only gave us stupendous increases in power generation and transmission, but vastly improved agricultural yields allowing Pakistan to become self-sufficient in food by the end of the 1960s.

Those investments ended by the mid-1970s, and the improvements they heralded for our economy have largely carried us through the decades. But today Pakistan is in dire need of another major round of infrastructure investments, in water, power and communications, to build durable grounds for future growth. What China is offering may well come up to the requirements of our economy, and the opportunity must not be missed.

However, one point needs to be amplified at the very outset. That point was made by the Minister for Planning and Development Ahsan Iqbal during his presentation at the open event. Pakistan will need to do a lot of work at its own end in order to avail itself of the benefits of what the Chinese are offering, and this work will need to “keep pace” with that conducted by the other side. The Chinese are not offering to do all the work for us, nor is all this coming for free. In the past, on at least two occasions, the Chinese have walked away from major commitments in infrastructure because the Pakistanis were too embroiled in bickering amongst themselves, or had not done their homework to live up to their end of the bargain. Investments in roads will require improved security.

Investments in power will need vastly improved fuel supply arrangements, especially for coal, in whose handling and supply we have no experience whatsoever. Across the board, for these benefits to flow and become the basis on which our future growth is built, much work will be required, resources will need to be committed, differences must be buried and competent coordination executed. Mr Iqbal was correct to flag all this in advance. Let us hope that we can rise to the promise of the moment.

Published in Dawn, April 19th, 2015

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