Foreign-funded projects of nearly $14.5 billion, listed by the government in five major sectors including energy, transport, water, and communication, have gone slack and problematic.
According to a document of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, of a total of 238 projects funded with $33.3 billion by international donors, 43 percent of projects have been classified as problematic in Sindh, Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), Balochistan and at the federal level.
These projects, which also include the major project of Shorkot- Khanewal M4 Motorway, are funded mainly by European Union, Asian Development Bank (ADB), China, Germany, Japan, the United States, the World Bank (WB), and other international finance structures.
It is worth mentioning here that Minister for Economic Affairs, Omar Ayub Khan and provincial Chief Secretaries held 22 stock-taking meetings on the energy, transport, water, and communication sector projects to find out solutions to the problems being faced in implementation. These meetings were held from 5 November 2020 to 10 November 2021. The mandate of the review was to find out both the recurrent and perennial issues that rendered these projects into problematic activities.
These reviews were conducted after repeated requests of WB, ADB and other donors with the reminders that despite being slow on servicing the foreign exchange loans, the sponsoring and monitoring agencies of the government did n0t demonstrate enough caution to put the money to better use.
It is to note that the water resource development projects and those falling under the urban development lists suffered more noticeably. The major project on the list, the Shorkot-Khanewal M4 Motorway, suffered not only delay but technical problems also.
The Economic Affairs Division list points out that large sums of the funded money remained undisturbed on account of slackness and due to technical issues. Some of the projects falling in this category included projects of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab to be funded at $449 million and $442 million respectively. These two projects are to be completed in 2027 and 2028, but not a penny has been spent on the ground. As for the $442 million Benazir Income Support Program (BISP) project of social protection, only $148 million was so far put into the project account.
The KP program, called SPEED, which was launched under the finance and revenue mechanism, was to receive $304 million for completion by June 2026.
However, only $96 million have been transferred into its account despite the fact that this project was launched three years ago to improve the provincial revenue collection mechanism. The Khyber Pass Economic Corridor project is to complete in May 2026 with an injection of $460 million, however, no money has so far been transferred to the project account over the past two years.
