Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif pressed for early groundbreaking on the ML-1 railway in a meeting with Asian Development Bank vice president Yingming Yang in Islamabad (Dawn).
The project
| | | |—|—| | Route | Karachi-Peshawar | | Length | 1,670km | | Total cost | $10 billion | | Secured so far | $2bn from ADB, for the Karachi-Rohri section | | Expected groundbreaking | early 2027, per Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal |
Financing is joint — Chinese, Pakistani and multilateral — under the CPEC framework, with the ADB funding the initial phase by agreement with China.
The gap between $2bn and $10bn
That is the number the announcement does not dwell on. One-fifth of the cost is secured, for one section. The remaining $8bn has no confirmed source in anything published today.
ML-1 has been under discussion since 2015 and has been re-scoped and re-costed repeatedly, largely because the full amount has never been assembled at once. Splitting it into fundable sections — Karachi-Rohri first — is the response to that, and it is a reasonable one. It also means the “groundbreaking” being pressed for is the start of a fifth of a railway.
The rest of the meeting
The two also reviewed Pakistan’s Country Partnership Strategy 2026-30, a five-year framework worth roughly $10 billion in ADB financing — coincidentally the same figure as ML-1’s total cost, and not to be confused with it.
Discussion also covered private sector development, energy and food security, export competitiveness, AI and information technology.
Why it matters now
Pakistan has just raised $3bn on international markets at 7.5 and 7.9 per cent, and the Senate has told the government to renegotiate IMF terms on special economic zones. Concessional multilateral money for infrastructure is considerably cheaper than a Eurobond coupon, which is the argument for pressing the ADB hard on timing.
[Image: PID via Dawn]
