Comment by Riaz Haq on May 5, 2026 at 10:08am

The Daily CPEC
@TheDailyCPEC
🚨BREAKING: Gwadar receives multiple cargo ships carrying Chinese industrial goods, boosting its role as a regional hub.

https://x.com/TheDailyCPEC/status/2051556256020931036?s=20

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As of early May 2026, Chinese ships, including the M.V. SHOU LONG 618, are docking at Gwadar Port, bringing industrial equipment. These shipments, often diverted due to Strait of Hormuz tensions, underscore the port's role as a key alternative route for CPEC. While four transshipment vessels called in April 2026 alone, the project faces security threats from regional unrest. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
Key Details on Chinese Activity:
Recent Shipments: On May 4, 2026, a vessel discharged over 16,000 metric tons of Chinese-origin, industrial equipment and pipes originally meant for Kuwait.
Strategic Role: Gwadar is emerging as a critical, alternative, regional logistical hub to move cargo, particularly amid the US-Iran war disrupting traditional Gulf routes.
Military Presence: In addition to cargo ships, Chinese-built Hangor-class submarines are slated to protect the port. Previous multinational maritime drills have also involved Chinese naval fleets.
Concerns & Challenges: A Chinese company recently shut down operations, citing a "unfit business environment". [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]
Would you like to know more about the economic benefits of this development or the specific security measures in place for these ships?

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Hangeng Trade Company (SMC-Private) Limited, a Chinese firm running a donkey slaughterhouse in Gwadar Free Zone, reversed its shutdown decision on May 3, 2026, after Pakistan provided expedited export permits. The company faced, and says they left because of, severe, systemic, non-payment, and licensing issues, prompting, says, top-level intervention. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
Key details regarding Chinese operations in Gwadar, particularly the recent controversy:
Export Controversy: The Hangeng Trade Company plant was built to process and export donkey meat and hides to China. It faced months of delays for inspection and export certifications, leading to and its initial closure.
Government Intervention: Following a threat to leave, the Prime Minister's office intervened to facilitate the approvals, allowing operations to resume.
Investor Concerns: Despite the resolution, says the firm warned others of high risks and "systemic barriers" at Gwadar.
Overall Context: The incident highlights, says, challenges in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) amidst, says, worsening security and, says, bureaucracy. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
Key Institutional Roles:
Operator: The port is primarily managed by and and says is run by the of China.
Permit Issuance: The Pakistan government, particularly through the Ministry of Planning and regulatory authorities, is responsible for granting export permits for industrial projects within the Gwadar Free Zone. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

Comment by Riaz Haq on Monday

How CPEC 2.0 Can Reshape Pakistan’s Economy? – OpEd

https://www.eurasiareview.com/10052026-how-cpec-2-0-can-reshape-pak...

By Dr. Hamza Khan

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor has come to a pivotal point in 2026. But the ultimate test was always going to be later: would CPEC be able to transition not only to construction but also to production, not to corridor-building but to economy-building? The response in early 2026 seems to be optimistically hesitant. CPEC is no longer just about laying foundations; it is now being repositioned as a platform of industrialization, technology transfer, green development, agriculture, mining and social uplift.


This shift is usually referred to as CPEC 2.0. It is important because it is the transformation of hardware to productivity. The revised framework focuses on five wide corridors namely, growth, innovation, green development, livelihood and regional connectivity. Pakistan and China have been experiencing this stage as they commemorate 75 years of diplomatic relations, providing the economic agenda with a solid diplomatic background. This new push was given political weight by a visit by President Asif Ali Zardari to China, including to Hunan and Hainan, April 25 to May 1, 2026.

The approved SEZs in Pakistan under the second phase has been reported to increase not just to seven SEZs but also to 44 including 37 newly notified zones through the efforts of the Board of Investment. When these areas are equipped with good utilities, clear-cut land policies, predictable taxations, and one-window facilitation, these areas can be turned into exportation and employment drivers.

Energy has continued to be the support of the success of CPEC. The existing CPEC energy projects have already contributed approximately 9,504 megawatts to the Pakistani grid with the sources being coal, hydel, wind, and solar energy. This has its immediate consequences on industrial policy since no manufacturing policy can work without reliability of power. Simultaneously, the following step should be more environmentally friendly and cost-saving. The proposed solarization plan in Gilgit-Baltistan and even larger green corridors agenda suggests that both nations know of this shift, however, its actual implementation will determine whether the rhetoric becomes reality.

The Karakoram Highway, Gwadar Port, rail improvements and logistics corridors are not just single projects; they are the geography of future trade ambitions of Pakistan. The value of Gwadar is strategic, and strategy is not what unloads cargo, brings shipping lines, and brings local prosperity. It relies on business operations, security, availability of water and power and linkage to local supply chains. CPEC 2.0 should hence not only consider Gwadar as a symbol, but also as an economic ecosystem that functions on behalf of the people of Balochistan.



The announcement by BYD that it will assemble electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles in Pakistan by July or August 2026 is an indication of how Chinese investment can go beyond traditional infrastructure to advanced manufacturing. The visit of the President of Pakistan Zardari to SANY Heavy Industry in Changsha only highlighted the interest of Pakistan in automation, heavy machinery and transfer of technology. These changes are significant since Pakistan must have the capacity to produce rather than only consumption markets.

No less important are agriculture and mining. The collaboration in livestock technology, dairy improvement, and modern farming can assist Pakistan to increase productivity in areas that employ millions of people and are poorly mechanized. Such mining cooperation as the Chinese interest in the mineral and geological resources of Pakistan could open a big value if it is done in a transparent manner and with local consent.

Comment by Riaz Haq yesterday

Chris Meder
@EVCurveFuturist
Pakistan may be accidentally building one of the world’s first decentralised #solar economies. The craziest part? Real scale barely shows in official stats. Imported 51.5 GW solar panels by late 2025—nearly = entire grid. Yet registered net-metered rooftop solar just 5.3–6.8 GW.

What makes this story so extraordinary is the speed.

In only a few years, Pakistan appears to have gone from a relatively minor solar market to potentially sourcing around a quarter of its electricity from solar once distributed generation is included.

👉 ~16.6–17 GW solar imports in 2024
👉 ~18 GW solar imports in 2025
👉 ~51.5 GW cumulative imports by late 2025
👉 Rooftop solar: ~1.3 GW → 4.1 GW in 2024
👉 ~5.3–6.8 GW registered rooftop solar in 2025
👉 24+ GW estimated behind-the-meter/off-grid
👉 Solar potentially ~25% of actual electricity use

The massive gap between imported panels and officially registered systems strongly suggests tens of gigawatts are now operating quietly on homes, farms, factories and businesses across the country.

This increasingly looks less like a normal energy transition and more like large-scale consumer-led grid defection.

And economics is driving nearly all of it.

Electricity tariffs surged. Diesel prices climbed. Blackouts remained common. Meanwhile ultra-cheap Chinese solar panels and falling battery prices made self-generation economically irresistible.
So millions effectively made the same calculation:

Generate your own power, or remain trapped inside an expensive and unstable system.

Once solar becomes cheaper than the grid itself, adoption can move faster than governments, utilities and even official statistics can keep up with.

This isn’t gradual transition by any stretch. It may ultimately become a blueprint for how energy-poor nations break free from legacy old-world energy systems dominated by fossil fuels and increasingly expensive centralised power.

It’s decentralisation at escape velocity.

This is #Bettrification.

https://x.com/EVCurveFuturist/status/2054116873491431484?s=20

Comment by Riaz Haq yesterday

Chris Meder
@EVCurveFuturist
Pakistan’s grid is doing something rare. Fossil has fallen from 66% to 44%. Nuclear is scaling. Solar is breaking out, wind is joining in & decentralised rooftop solar is scaling at an unprecedented pace. Meanwhile, hydro holds the system together as the generational shift begins.

For two decades, Pakistan’s power mix barely moved. Fossil sat around 60–70%, hydro carried ~30%, and everything else was marginal. Then the energy transition began, and it didn’t follow the usual script.

Nuclear moved first. From ~2% in 2000 to ~17% by 2025, it’s one of the few systems globally where nuclear share is clearly rising. That growth is deliberate, built, and running at high capacity, quietly strengthening the backbone of the grid.

Wind edged in gradually. But the real disruption came from solar. From effectively zero to ~8% in a short window, driven less by policy and more by economics. High tariffs, unreliable supply, and cheap panels triggered a massive surge in behind-the-meter installs.

That’s the key nuance. A large share of Pakistan’s solar boom sits off-grid and isn’t fully captured in official generation data. It makes the system look slower to change than it actually is, and makes building a clean dataset far more challenging than in most countries.

Two very different forces are now moving together. Nuclear is scaling from the top down, engineered and centralised. Solar is spreading from the bottom up, reactive and decentralised. They’re not competing. They’re stacking.

Hydro sits in the middle, doing what it has always done, balancing and stabilising the system. Fossil is still large and still necessary, but it’s no longer growing. From ~66% down to ~44%, it’s clearly losing ground.

Pakistan hasn’t followed a clean transition pathway. It’s been pushed into change by cost, constraints, and demand. The result isn’t one technology replacing another. It’s a system being reshaped from multiple directions at once.

Hydro anchors. Nuclear scales. Solar breaks out. Wind warms up. Fossil fills what’s left.

Not merely a transition. A system under pressure, starting to bend.

https://x.com/EVCurveFuturist/status/2053943231298388227?s=20

Comment by Riaz Haq 1 hour ago

Pakistan Growth Accelerates Even as Iran War Raises Risks - Bloomberg

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-13/pakistan-growth-...

The committee approved provisional GDP growth of 3.7% for the fiscal year ending June, expanding the size of the economy to $452 billion.

 

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Pakistan’s economy accelerated in the last quarter even as the rising global crude prices due to the Iran conflict cloud the outlook for the nation, which imports most of its fuel requirement.

Gross domestic product accelerated to 3.99% in the three months ended March, compared with 2.4% a year earlier, according to data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics. The economy grew 4.05% in the preceding quarter after the data was revised. 

The committee also approved provisional GDP growth of 3.7% for the fiscal year ending June, expanding the size of the economy to $452 billion.

Pakistan’s economy remains fragile, with uneven growth and continued reliance on support from the International Monetary Fund and external inflows, even as easing inflation is offset by rising food and energy prices. The crisis in Middle East has added uncertainty as higher imported oil costs threatens to further widen the trade deficit and deplete foreign exchange reserves.

Pakistan to Receive $1.32 Billion as IMF Board Approves Tranches

According to the data, agriculture grew 3.01% in the third quarter, while industry and services expanded 4.65% and 4.18%, respectively, underscoring improving momentum in key sectors of the economy.

Comment by Riaz Haq 18 minutes ago

Pakistan says 30 percent of over $10 billion MoUs with China translated into potential projects

https://www.arabnews.com/node/2643439/pakistan

Pakistan and China have signed various MoUs on trade, investment, technology, digital cooperation in recent years
Pakistan launches Digital Economic Center in Islamabad set up by Chinese industrial e-commerce giant IBI Guolian Gufan

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar announced on Wednesday that around 30 percent of Islamabad’s memoranda of understanding (MoUs) with China, under various sectors amounting to over $10 billion, have been translated into potential projects.

The Pakistani deputy premier was speaking at the launch of the IBI Pakistan Digital Economic Center in Islamabad. Set up by IBI Guolian Gufan, a Chinese company focused on industrial e-commerce and digital supply chains, the initiative seeks to advance digital trade, industrial connectivity and supply chain integration between the two countries.

Pakistan and China have highlighted digital cooperation as the next phase of their multi-billion-dollar China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project. Beijing refers to this cooperation initiative with countries as “The Digital Silk Road.”

The Digital Silk Road is a component of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. It finances and supports digital connectivity infrastructure to support Beijing’s technology companies, goods and services. Pakistan hopes aligning with this digital track will help modernize its local industry and support its aim to become a regional digital transit and services hub.

“We can see the difference that 30 percent of the almost over $10 billion of MoUs signed have already been translated into real, potential projects which are being virtually finalized,” Dar told participants of the ceremony in Islamabad.

He said the launch of the IBI Pakistan Digital Economic Center in Islamabad marks the beginning of the Digital Silk Road in Pakistan. Dar noted that cooperation between Pakistan and China in artificial intelligence and emerging technologies is also expanding rapidly, with both sides strengthening collaboration in the IT sector as well.

Dar appreciated the IBI’s entry into Pakistan, noting that it was a platform serving millions of enterprises across over 100 industrial sectors in China.

“And that reflects strong confidence in our economy and future potential,” he said.

Speaking at the ceremony earlier, IT Minister Shaza Fatima Khawaja said Pakistan passed the Digital Nation Pakistan Act last year to transform the country into a digital society, economy and governance model.

She said the digitization of Pakistan’s industry can alone unlock anywhere between five to seven percent of the GDP, stressing that it would mean additional $20-30 billion added to the economy by 2030.

Comment