The sources say that China wants JCC meeting at least before the expected visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping in May or June this year.
ISLAMABAD: (Urdu Point/Pakistan Point News-Jan 24th, 2020) The Chinese government asked Pakistan to hold 10th Joint Cooperation Committee (JCC) meeting under China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) to discuss the pace of different mega projects, the sources claimed here on Friday.
According to the details, the both sides would deliberate on pace of mega projects’ completion including Railways’ Mainline (ML-1) project of $9.2 billion.
They say that JCC meeting will be held before the expected visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to Islamabad in May or early May this year.
National Development Reform Commission of China wrote letter to Pakistani officials to convene the 10th meeting of the JCC in April 2020, asking them to hold the meeting little early from the scheduled time of June or July 2020.
Earlier, PM Imran Khan rejected the US criticism on China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) by terming it “non-sense”.
The Prime Minister, who arrived today after his three-day successful Davos visit, said that CPEC was really helping Pakistan to be economically strong and independent.
He expressed these views during his interview to a US news channel CNBC, shown on Wednesday night. PM Imran Khan, on other hand, urged US President Donald Trump and the United Nations to mediate between Pakistan and India over Kashmir.
PM Imran Khan was quoted as saying during the interview: “When the Chinese came to help us with this Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and CPEC, we were really at the rock bottom,”.
He further said that they are grateful to Chinese that they came and rescued them. Hadley Gamble conducted interview of the PM.
Khan said: “Chinese pumped in, not just they gave us loans—and the loans, by the way are barely five or six percent of the total portfolio,”. He also rejected the perception that CPEC was a debt-trap. These are Chinese invested in Pakistan and it was because of them that the country now has opportunity to attract foreign investment.
