Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal on Tuesday said Pakistan needs to bring its house in order before asking the world for investment.
Speaking at a China-Pakistan Economic Corridor related seminar, Iqbal said, "I will repeat what Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif have already said — we need to bring our house in order before we ask the world to invest in Pakistan."
"We are close to achieving this goal," he said adding that the whole world is facing rapid political, social and financial changes.
"The time of civil wars has passed and the world is moving towards inclusiveness and the power in all great countries lies in the in universities, not in missiles or military arsenals," Iqbal said during his address.
He added: "Our commitment to peace is not a weakness but a strength, which is why we want to strengthen our ties with Afghanistan and settle disputes through talks."
"China has made a lot of progress but we lagged behind while we should be learning our lesson from it, it [China] has provided its people with a better quality of life and managed to do it with stability and zero conflict," Iqbal said while discussing Pakistan's future after the completion of various CPEC projects.
"We have produced 10,000 megawatts of power in the past four years, if we bring our house in order we will be able to do much more in that span of time," he said while adding that Pakistan is poised to become a major country in region once the projects under the CPEC programme come to a conclusion.
"Sadly, while CPEC has become reality people are busy in propagating about it negatively, some call it the 'China-Punjab Economic Corridor', while others call it the next East India Company," Iqbal said adding that there is no truth in these statements as making colonies is not China's agenda and CPEC is the most transparent project ever initiated in Pakistan.
