LAHORE: A 20-member delegation of the Pakistan-China Business Forum told Punjab’s industries minister on Friday that Chinese investors plan to set up electric bus and truck assembly plants in the province and want land for a 100-kanal China Pavilion to showcase Chinese products.
Wei Linzhui, director of the forum’s Beijing office, said Chinese companies were also ready to invest in Punjab’s IT sector and that an information technology university in Gujrat was under consideration. The delegation included companies from electric vehicles, IT, tourism and agriculture.
Industries Minister Chaudhry Shafay Hussain said the province would provide the land for the pavilion and urged the companies to build bus and truck plants. Several electric motorcycle factories had opened in Punjab over the past year, he said, and electric buses imported by the province were already running in several cities.
He said Chinese firms had made fresh investments worth millions of dollars in Punjab over the past two and a half years, that chip frame manufacturing would begin in Pakistan for the first time, and that Vivo’s factory at the Faisalabad Industrial Estate was nearly complete. Vivo announced its first Pakistani production base in 2021.
Hussain announced a 50-acre expo centre in Faisalabad, with construction to start by the end of the year after talks with the federal government, and a community centre for foreign investors at the Faisalabad Special Economic Zone. Plot prices in industrial estates had been cut, he said.
Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif visited Xinjiang in August to court Chinese investment. Former senator Lt Gen (retd) Abdul Qayyum and forum co-chairman Ijaz Sheikh attended the meeting.
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