THE Punjab provincial government is willing to spend Rs 350bn ($US 1.23bn) on infrastructure upgrades, including track-doubling projects, within the province, according to Pakistan’s federal minister of railways, Hanif Abbasi.
Appearing before the National Assembly Standing Committee on Railways, Abbasi reported on his recent meeting in Lahore with the chief minister of Punjab, Maryam Nawaz Sharif, where the latter had expressed her interest in supporting infrastructure upgrades as part of work to modernise the national network.
A key component of network modernisation is the Main Line 1 (ML-1) project to upgrade Pakistan’s principal rail corridor from Karachi to Peshawar. This $US 6.8bn scheme forms part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a component of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and funding has been sought from Chinese sources.
In a separate development, Pakistan Railways (PR) chairman, Syed Mazhar Ali Shah, told the Senate Standing Committee on Railways that the ML-1 project would start during the current financial year. He reported that Ministry of Railways had submitted a request for Rs 75bn in funding under the 2025-26 federal budget.
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