LOS ANGELES, July 13: A US group, owned by Pakistanis, has promised to invest heavily in Karachi’s transport sector, said Naimatullah Khan, Nazim of Karachi, who is on a US tour these days to seek investment for Karachi, particularly in its health and education sectors.

“We have signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the group in New York and it will initially start with 300 buses,” Mr Khan said at a briefing organized in the office of Safi Qureshey, honorary consul general of Pakistan in Los Angeles.

He said the initial investment commitment was around $20 million.

He said so far his government had got investment commitments of over $1.6 billion, including $1.2 billion in the railway sector by Interglobe, $200 million by Saudi Arab-based Pakistanis, for setting up a hospital, and $250 million from a Qatar-based firm to develop Clifton’s Bagh-i-Bin Qasim.

He also explained how he successfully managed to approve Rs20 billion development budget for Karachi, saying, he would do his best to use half of the budget within the next six month, which would also be used in setting up a women’s university and an IT university, for which Karachi needed money from Pakistanis in the Silicon Valley.

“My aim is to create around 50,000 jobs in the next two years,” Mr Khan said.

He also said he held a meeting with officials of the powerful Association of Pakistani Physicians in North America, a sort of multi-billion dollar club of 7,000 Pakistani doctors, regarding setting up hospitals in Karachi.

He said his administration would provide free plots to overseas investors for setting up hospitals if run on a 50 per cent commercial and 50 per cent welfare basis.

The Karachi Nazim said his primary goal was to bring foreign investment only from overseas Pakistanis. “I do not seek any pure foreign (Western) investment,” he said.