ISLAMABAD:
Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb on Thursday assured the National Assembly that the Sukkur-Hyderabad-Karachi motorway is essential for Pakistan’s economic connectivity and will be completed at all costs.
Responding to concerns raised by lawmakers, the minister said the project has been prioritised and will move forward with funding either through foreign sources or the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP).
He said the federal budget is currently being finalised, and the Minister for Planning will be informed about the importance of the project so that appropriate allocations can be made.
Minister of State for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives, Chaudhry Armaghan Subhani while responding to a calling attention notice over the project’s exclusion from the PSDP 2024-25, he clarified that although the motorway did not make it to this year’s development portfolio, he assured members that the Sukkur-Hyderabad Motorway (M-6) would be included in the PSDP 202526 and treated as a priority initiative under multiple funding mechanisms.
He added that the Ministry of Communications has already proposed Rs10 billion for the M-6 in the next PSDP, with the figure subject to revision.
“This project will be reflected not only in the PSDP but also supported through foreign funding and Public-Private Partnership (PPP) models,” he said adding that groundwork is underway to begin the project in the next fiscal year.
He informed the house that global financial institutions, including the Asian Development Bank (ADB), are interested in co-financing the motorway and that negotiations are in progress.
Dismissing allegations of regional favoritism, he said the M-6 is not a Punjab-centric project, pointing out that only an 18-kilometer stretch falls in Punjab, while the rest covers Sindh and Balochistan.
