$11.5bn road building plan inaugurated

Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif yesterday inaugurated one of the first highway sections of his government’s planned $11.5bn spending plan on roads intended to expand trade and speed up economic growth.Sharif gave a speech and then drove in a convoy down part of the new 75km section of the Karachi-Hyderabad Motorway (M-9) he dedicated yesterday as part of a planned network connecting the southern port city of Karachi to interior cities.Pakistan is embarking on the biggest road-building programme in its history, with Sharif’s office saying projects worth 1,200bn Pakistan rupees ($11.5bn) are under way.“After the completion of these projects, the total length of (new) motorways will reach 2,000km,” Sharif’s office said in a statement.Pakistan’s national network of highways now stretches to about 12,000km, according to the National Highway Authority.Many of the new projects are slated to link up with roads connecting to the wider $57bn China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a Beijing-funded project building dozens of roads, ports and power plants in Pakistan.