LAHORE: “The chief minister should restore Faisalabad Industrial Estate instead of wasting resources on Sheikhupura Industrial Zone,” deputy prime minister Chaudhary Parvez Elahi said on Thursday.
He said had Faisalabad Industrial Estate, set up over 4,500 acres, been completed, hundreds of plots would now be available for local as well as foreign investors.
He was addressing newsmen at a press conference at his residence.
Elahi said good investments were attracted by good policies, not by merely signing agreements.
He said the government had failed to attract investors because gas and electricity supplies were not consistent. Elahi said land had not yet been acquired for Sheikhupura Industrial Zone. He said the chief minister was claiming that applications had been received for 90 per cent of the land.
He said if the Faisalabad Industrial Estate project had not been disregarded, by this time the government would be introducing industrial estates at division and district levels.
“My government set up an export processing zone in Gujranwala that should have been upgraded. Instead, it was destroyed in six years,” he said.
He said the Punjab was an agricultural province but the incumbent government was destroying agriculture by acquiring hundreds of acres of cultivated land for the industrial zone.
He said funds had been allocated for power generation in the province but in six years “even six units had not been established.”
“Where has this money gone?” he asked. He urged the government to complete Faisalabad Industrial Estate.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 17th, 2014.