Federal Minister for Planning Ahsan Iqbal claimed Monday that the government has achieved total consensus among provinces as to the best way forward on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a government press release said.

In a briefing to the 20th meeting of the parliamentary committee on CPEC, Iqbal had apprised the committee of the recently-concluded 6th meeting of the Joint Cooperation Committee (JCC) in Beijing.

Ahsan Iqbal told the committee that the Bhasha Dam would be part of CPEC, and that 11,000MW of electricity would be added to the national grid by 2018. He termed the development the biggest investment in energy in the history of Pakistan.

The minister said Thar coal would be used to generate electricity for the next "400 years" and that two transmission lines being installed between Matiari-Lahore and Matiari-Faisalabad would transmit electricity from the south to the national grid, benefiting all parts of Pakistan.

He added that there was agreement on prioritizing the construction of the western route of CPEC as well as the upgradation and construction of the Karachi-Torkham railway line at a cost of $8 billion. This will be the biggest railway modernisation project in the history of Pakistan, he said.

The minister informed the meeting that industrial zones proposed by the four provinces, as well as Azad Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan, had been accepted and a proper feasibility survey would be carried out. A proposal from the Sindh government for an additional port at Keti Bandar would also be considered, he said.

He said that all four provincial capitals — Lahore, Karachi, Quetta and Peshawar — would receive a rail-based mass transit system as part of CPEC.

Iqbal also said that a caravan had carried goods from Kashgar to Gwadar on the western route on November 13, claiming that the establishment of this road link had slashed the travel time from Quetta to Gwadar from two days to eight hours.

In his remarks, Senator Mushahid Hussain, who chaired the meeting, said that CPEC was well on track and that 2017 would be the year all key projects take off.