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By APD writer Muhammad Sohail
**ISLAMABAD, April 16 (APD) ** -- Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has welcomed an interest offered by the Chairman of China Silk Road Group Limited Yan Lijin in the country’s much-hyped low-cost housing project, local media reported Tuesday.
Yan called on Khan and showed a keen interest in the project and offered an affordable solution for the construction of low-cost houses by setting up a plant for pre-fabricated housing structures in Pakistan.
During the meeting, the prime minister highlighted his government’s various initiatives to improve ‘Ease of Doing Business’ and providing the foreign investors an enabling environment to undertake profitable business ventures in Pakistan.
He also informed the delegation about the measures taken by the government to provide an enabling environment to the foreign investors so they could run profitable businesses in the country.
He said there existed a huge potential to further broaden the scope of cooperation under the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), adding that time-tested relations between the two countries should be translated into a mutually beneficial economic equation.
In his first official address to the nation after assuming office last year, Khan promised that he will push to build five million cheap houses for needy people, an initiative he believed would also help the government create hundreds of thousands direct and indirect jobs.
The government has already completed the process to receive applications from the public for the proposed houses.
According to the 2017 census of Pakistan, the country’s total population numbered approximately 207.7 million people, out of which, 75.7 million citizens live in the urban areas.
At present, the urban housing demand in Pakistan amounts to approximately 350,000 units per year. The corresponding supply of these amenities, which is 150,000 units per year, in no way bridges this gap.
(Top image: Mr. Yan Lijin, Chairman of China Silk Road Group Ltd. calls on Prime Miniter Imran Khan at PM's Office Islamabad on 15th April, 2019.)
(ASIA PACIFIC DAILY)
