World Bank for financing National Trade Corridor Improvement Plan
KARACHI (June 19 2008): The World Bank (WB) is planning a financial support program for Pakistan to develop its ports, roads and railways under the National Trade Corridor Improvement Program (NTCIP), Business Recorder learnt on Wednesday.
"The Bank is planning a program of financial support for roads, railways, and ports and technical assistance for implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of the National Trade Corridor Program over the next five to six years," sources quoted WB Transport Business Strategy for 2008-2012 as saying.
Under NTCIP, approved by the former Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz government, it had been decided to take a number of policy measures to reduce the cost of trade and transport logistics and bring the quality of services to international standards to reduce the cost of doing business in Pakistan and ultimately enhance exports competitiveness and accelerate industrialisation. Sources said that one of the steps under NTCIP was termination of Karachi Dock Labour Board (KDLB) and de-registering the dockers.
In February 2008, Caretaker Federal Minister for Ports and Shipping, Dr Fahim-ud-Din Ansari, had told Business Recorder that the Bank was giving a $600 million loan-cum-grant to Karachi Port Trust (KPT) at a nominal interest rate to either "privatise" or wind up the Board.
A WB Project Information Document, issued on 'Appraisal Stage' in April 2007 said that the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (WB) would lend $79 million to KPT for management and implementation of the 'Karachi Dock Labour Project'.
It is worth mentioning here that the Collective Bargaining Agent (CBA), representative body of KDLB, terming the WB as its anti has warned of strong resistance if the government went on with termination or privatisation of the Board.
"We do not know about any such planning and would fully resist if the government did that... the World Bank has never been our well-wisher," said Mohammad Hilal, Senior Vice President of CBA.
According to sources, Islamabad has been seeking financial support from WB to ensure swift availability of funds and process with abolition of the KDLB Scheme in a short period of time. Abolition of the Scheme, they said, would minimise the overall cost for the economy to increase productivity of the Karachi Port.
Key upshots of the Program, the Bank's Transport Business Strategy was eyeing, included reducing the cost of domestic transport and non-factor services in the total value of commodities and the transport and transit costs and times for goods overall, increasing the satisfaction of Corridor users and rail share of long-distance transport of freight, reducing the operating deficit of railways with objectively determined and targeted subsidies, enhancing the safety and reliability of transport operations and improving the governance and accountability of entities participating in the Program, sources said.
In 2005, the government had launched major initiatives around the Corridor to reduce the cost of trade by improving transport logistics infrastructure and services. According to an estimate inadequate performance of transport sector costs the country's economy 4 to 6 percent of GDP each year.
The proposed Corridor, which spreads over north-south backbone route from Karachi via Lahore to Rawalpindi with onward links to Afghanistan, contains two ports, which handle 95 percent of country's external trade, said the Strategy.
The WB strategy, source said, acknowledged that Pakistan had adopted a holistic and integrated approach encompassing the public and private sectors, services and infrastructure, reforms and investments and various sectors that were responsible for performance of the approved Corridor (highways, road transport, ports and shipping, civil aviation, railways, and customs and trade logistics). The NTCIP would be implemented by different governmental agencies including the ministry of ports and shipping, ministry of defence, ministry of railways, ministry of communications/National Highways Authority, Planning Commission and the Central Revenue Board, they said.
Business Recorder [Pakistan's First Financial Daily]
