The Dawn, Nov 22
LAHORE, Nov 21: Former Azad Kashmir prime minister Sardar Atiq Khan has said Kashmiri immigrants are not investing their liquid assets worth over £20 billion at home due to federal government’s policies.
Making a presentation about the economic potential of Azad Jammu and Kashmir at a meeting of the Lahore Economic Journalists Association here on Saturday, he said the Kashmiri immigrants would willingly exploit the investment potential of their assets in case the federal government provided them with proper infrastructure and incentives.
He said the AJK had 17,000MW hydro-electric potential which could be exploited by $40 billion investment. The entire investment could be recovered in five years and low cost of electricity could be used for bringing down the cost of doing business in Pakistan. The surplus electricity could be exported to India and other states to earn foreign exchange. Pakistan would not require huge infrastructure for import of electricity from Central Asia if it generated cheap hydel power locally.
He said the AJK government did not have the resources to exploit the hydel power potential. The Pakistan government was also facing resource constraints. The Indians had resolved the resource constraint problem for hydropower projects in Himachal and Madiha Pardesh through investment of respective state governments and sharing profits with them. The Pakistan government could attract the investment of expatriate Kashmiris for hydropower projects.
He said the tourism potential of the valley could also be exploited as 800,000 of the 1.5 million immigrants from Kashmir living in Europe were youngsters and wanted to visit the land of their ancestors. They would visit Pakistan if tourist resorts and infrastructure was developed in the valley through lucrative public-private partnership. http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/national/sardar-atiq-sees-solution-to-crises-in-ajk-219
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