Exploring Chinese markets

THAT China is Pakistan’s tried and tested friend has been proven time and again and in almost all aspects of relations between the two countries. This has been evident in the way China has always come to Pakistan’s rescue in times of economic distress. In the last about five years, China’s generous balance of payments support to Pakistan had gone a long way in keeping Islamabad economically afloat. True to the pattern, on the very first day of President General Pervez Musharraf’s current five-day visit to China, Beijing once again lived up to its reputation of being generous when it came to offering economic support to Pakistan — by extending the maturities of past balance of payments support to a medium term. Until this year, the balance of payments support loans used to be renewed annually. In addition, China has offered Pakistan a grant of 100 million dollars and concessional financing for a number of projects amounting to a total of 260 million dollars.

These projects include the Saindak copper mining project, research and development programmes in science and technology, a 500kv Muzaffargarh and Ghatti transmission line, Jinnah hydropower project and a number of sub-stations for Wapda. There are some other projects as well which were identified and discussed when the Chinese Prime Minister Zhu Rongji visited Pakistan early this year to mark the fiftieth year of Pak-China friendship. Strategically the most important among them was the Gawadar port development project. With the prospects of peace and stability returning to Afghanistan becoming brighter following the installation of the Hamid Karzai government in Kabul, the Gawadar project becomes all the more important as it could, when completed, turn into a major sea outlet for Central Asian fossil fuel. And appropriately so because it would be overlooking the Gulf of Hormuz, the main sea route of the oil going from the Gulf to the world markets.

China has been assisting Pakistan all these years in building this country’s basic industrial capacities like the Machine Tool Factory and the Heavy Mechanical Complex and many other such facilities. China has also been offering assistance for some years now to expand the capacity of the Karachi Steel Mill to make it profitable, because with its present capacity of 1.1 million tons, the KSM can never become cost-efficient no matter how many workers are laid off to reduce the losses. It is time Pakistan looked at this offer with renewed interest because with the commencement of reconstruction in Afghanistan, the demand for iron and steel in that country would increase manifold, and unless we have the needed capacity to meet this demand, other countries like India would fill the gap and benefit.

One more thing, all through these 50 years, Pakistan has never tried to take advantage of the huge Chinese market. We have always kept our sights fixed on the relatively inaccessible western markets, neglecting to put to more beneficial use our friendship with the world’s largest market whose economy has been growing at the rate of more than 10 per cent over the last 15 years. We have rarely sent any businessmen’s delegation to China to explore market possibilities. Neither have we done any market surveys of that hugely populous country to find out what they need and how best we can meet some of their demands. PIA was the first and perhaps the only foreign airline flying into China for more than 20 years. But when China opened its skies to foreign airlines, PIA was nowhere to be seen. In fact, it is time we mounted a concerted campaign to enhance access for our goods in the rapidly expanding Chinese market. But before doing so we must learn the rules and regulations that govern Chinese commerce and trade.

They too deserve help

THE US government has announced a compensation package worth $6 billion for the families and victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. The package will mean an average $1.6 million for the families of some 3,200 people killed in the attacks, while the remainder will be distributed among the 2,000 badly injured victims. While no amount of money can compensate for the loss of life and the emotional damage done to the families, the package will certainly help alleviate the financial hardship and insecurities of the affected families. The victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks are scattered as far away from the Ground Zero in New York and the Pentagon as Afghanistan and its neighbouring countries. These include hundreds of thousands of displaced Afghans, who, as a direct result of the American military action in their country, were forced to seek shelter in refugee camps — both inside and across the Afghan borders.

Living in sub-human conditions, they too need to be succoured and rehabilitated with the provision of housing in many cases, rebuilding of damaged dwellings in others and assurance of sustainable means of livelihood generally. A hundred thousand Afghan children — victims of the current crisis — are in danger of dying of cold and hunger this winter if urgent help is not rushed to them in time. The interim government is now in place in Kabul and there is talk of reconstructing Afghanistan with generous assistance promised by the US, European Union and many other countries. It is time that these innocent victims of America’s ‘War on Terror’ are rescued out of their misery. This must be done on a war footing, and the coalition partners must set up a rehabilitation fund for the displaced Afghans on a priority basis.

Punished for the wrong reason

THE report that an official of the Capital Development Authority (CDA) was suspended for not obliging the request of an officer from the Army Monitoring Team (AMT) to include his name in the allotment of a plot in a housing scheme is disturbing. Even more disturbing is the information that the concerned deputy director of Kutchi Abadis in CDA, under the instructions of the AMT, had already included the names of over fifty undeserving people who were not eligible for the low-cost housing scheme at Alipur Farash before he finally turned down the request by an AMT major. The official was suspended on Friday by CDA after the incident was brought to the notice of the District Army Monitoring Team.

While it is not uncommon to find this kind of behaviour in any government department or organization like CDA — that of allotting plots or offering any other kind of handouts to undeserving candidates — it is disheartening to note that the AMT, which has been put in place precisely to stop this kind of behaviour and irregularities in civilian outfits, should also become a part of this practice. Logically speaking, the CDA official should have been suspended for allotting plots to the fifty people who were not eligible for the scheme in Alipur Farash, rather than for refusing to allot a plot to an ineligible candidate. Until and unless officials are suspended or punished for the right and correct reasons, corruption will continue to remain a bane of this country.