Transport in Pakistan is extensive and varied. In recent years, new national highways have been built, with the addition of motorways which have improved trade and logistics within the country. Pakistan's rail network is also undergoing expansion in recent years. Airports and seaports have been built with the addition of foreign and domestic funding. Transportation challenges in Pakistan are escalating due to poor planning, inadequate governance, and corrupt practices.
Gwadar is a port city on the southwestern coast of the Pakistani province of Balochistan. The city is located on the shores of the Arabian Sea, opposite Oman and has a population of over 90,000, according to the 2017 census. It was an overseas possession of Oman from 1783 to 1958. It is about 120 km (75 mi) southwest of Turbat. The sister port city of Chabahar in Iran's Sistan and Baluchestan provinces is about 170 km (110 mi) to the west of Gwadar. On 2 April 2021, it was declared the capital of the south Balochistan region.
The Economic Cooperation Organization or ECO is a Eurasian political and economic intergovernmental organization that was founded in 1985 in Tehran by the leaders of Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey. It provides a platform to discuss ways to improve development and promote trade and investment opportunities. The ECO is an ad hoc organisation under the United Nations Charter. The objective is to establish a single market for goods and services, much like the European Union. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the ECO expanded to include Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan in 1992.
Regional policy is the sum of a series of policies formulated according to regional differences to coordinate regional relations and regional macro operation mechanism, which affects regional development at the macro level. It includes regional economic policy, regional social policy, regional environmental policy, regional political policy, regional cultural policy, etc.Regional policy aims to improve economic conditions in regions of relative disadvantage, either within a nation or within a supranational grouping such as the European Union. Additionally, a regional policy may try to address high levels of unemployment and lower-than-average per capita incomes. Its main tool is public investment.
The Greater Mekong Subregion, (GMS) or just Greater Mekong, is a trans-national region of the Mekong River basin in Southeast Asia. The region is home to more than 300 million people. It came into being with the launch of a development program in 1992 by the Asian Development Bank that brought together the six Asian countries of Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, and Vietnam.
The Laotian Chinese are Laotian citizens of Han Chinese ancestry. They constitute one of the many Overseas Chinese residing in Southeast Asia. At present, they constitute an estimated 1 to 2 percent of the Laotian population. The Laotian Chinese community have a disproportionately large presence in the Laotian business sector and dominate the Laotian economy today.
Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development SA is a Swiss for-profit entity and international development finance institution which invests in countries of East Africa, West Africa, Central Asia, and South Asia. It is based in Geneva, Switzerland.
The North–South express railway is a proposed high speed railway in Vietnam. The line would begin in Lạng Sơn and end in Cà Mau, connecting the two most urbanised areas in the country: Hanoi in the North, and Ho Chi Minh City in the South. The total proposed length would be 2,070 kilometres (1,290 mi).
Board of Investment (BOI) (Urdu: ہیئتِ پاکستان برائے سرمایہ کاری) is the premier investment promotion agency of Pakistan working under the administrative control of the Prime Minister’s Office and is mandated to promote and facilitate both local & foreign investment. The Board of Investment is a member of the World Association of Investment Promotion Agencies (WAIPA).
The Bangladesh, China, India and Myanmar Economic Corridor (BCIM) was a proposed corridor connecting India and China through Myanmar and Bangladesh as a corridor.
Infrastructure-based economic development, also called infrastructure-driven development, combines key policy characteristics inherited from the Rooseveltian progressive tradition and neo-Keynesian economics in the United States, France's Gaullist and neo-Colbertist centralized economic planning, Scandinavian social democracy as well as Singaporean and Chinese state capitalism: it holds that a substantial proportion of a nation’s resources must be systematically directed towards long term assets such as transportation, energy and social infrastructure in the name of long term economic efficiency and social equity.
China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is a 3,000 km Chinese infrastructure network project in construction in Pakistan. This sea-and-land-based corridor is aimed to secure and reduce the passage for China's energy imports from the Middle East, by avoiding the existing route from the Straits of Malacca between Malaysia and Indonesia, which, in case of war could be blockaded, and thus hamper the Chinese energy-dependent economic avenues. Developing a deep water port at Gwadar in the Arabian Sea and a well built road and rail line from this port to Xinjiang region in western China would be a shortcut for boosting the trade between Europe and China. In Pakistan, it aims to overcome an electricity shortfall, infrastructural development and modernize transportation networks. Along with shifting it from an agricultural based economic structure to industrial based.
The South Asia Subregional Economic Cooperation (SASEC) Program, set up in 2001, brings together Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, and Sri Lanka in a project-based partnership to promote regional prosperity by improving cross-border connectivity, boosting trade among member countries, and strengthening regional economic cooperation. As of June 2020, SASEC countries have implemented 61 regional projects worth over $13 billion in the energy, transport, trade facilitation, economic corridor development, and information and communications technology (ICT) sectors. The Manila, Philippines-based Asian Development Bank (ADB) serves as the Secretariat for the SASEC member countries.
An industrial corridor is a package of infrastructure spending allocated to a specific geographical area, with the intent to stimulate industrial development.
The Belt and Road Initiative, known in China as the One Belt One Road and sometimes referred to as the New Silk Road, is a global infrastructure development strategy adopted by the Chinese government in 2013 to invest in more than 150 countries and international organizations. The BRI is composed of six urban development land corridors linked by road, rail, energy, and digital infrastructure and the Maritime Silk Road linked by the development of ports.
Visakhapatnam–Chennai Industrial Corridor (VCIC), also Vizag–Chennai Industrial Corridor, is a key part of the East Coast Economic Corridor (ECEC), India's first coastal corridor. VCIC is aligned with the Golden Quadrilateral and is poised to play a critical role in driving India’s Act East Policy and Make in India campaign. The nearly 800-kilometer corridor links India with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and East Asian economies that form the bedrock of global manufacturing economy. The corridor traverses nine districts of the state of Andhra Pradesh. VCIC intends to complement the ongoing efforts of the Government of Andhra Pradesh (GoAP) to enhance industrial growth and create high quality jobs.
The East Coast Economic Corridor (ECEC) is India’s first coastal economic corridor, covering 2500 km of India's coastline, to be developed with the help of the Asian Development Bank (ADB). The ADB is to invest $500 million in infrastructural development of the project. Since late 2013, ADB has been supporting studies on transport corridors in India. Phase 1 of the ECEC is Visakhapatnam-Chennai Industrial Corridor (VCIC) which had been approved by the ADB board in October 2016. The ECEC running along the entire east coast of India from Kolkata to Kanyakumari, is a multimodal, regional maritime corridor that can play a vital role in unifying the large domestic market, as well as integrating the Indian economy with the dynamic global value chains of Southeast and East Asia. It would play a crucial role in the Government of India’s (GoI) Make in India campaign and also supports the port-led industrialization strategy under the Sagar Mala initiative and the Act East Policy by linking domestic companies with the vibrant global production networks of East and Southeast Asia.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Interbank Consortium is a platform for joint financing of development projects by members and other participants of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.
