Pakistan CPEC investment soars to $55bn after new Chinese loan

The Pakistan government has secured an additional $8.5 billion of investment from Beijing as part of the countries' joint energy, transport and infrastructure plan, Federal Minister Ahsan Iqbal said on Wednesday.

That is on top of the $46-billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project, which focuses on road building and energy infrastructure to end chronic power shortages in Pakistan and to link China's landlocked north-west with the deep-water port Gwadar on the Arabian Sea.

Some $4.5 billion of the additional investment will be spent on upgrading tracks and signaling on railway line from Karachi to Peshawar and increase the speed on the line to 160km per hour from the current 60-80kph, Ahsan told Reuters in an interview.

Another $4 billion will go toward an LNG terminal and transmission line, he added. "This has now all been approved, so this is an additional $8.5 billion to the $46 billion we had already, so we are now close to $55 billion," Ahsan said.

The International Monetary Fund said in June that repayments and profit repatriation from large-scale investments such as CPEC could add to Pakistan's medium- and long-term risks, predicting that the country's gross external financing needs would rise to $15.1 billion in 2018/2019 from $11.4 billion in the current financial year.