Daily Times

Preparations for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s (SCO) summit that Islamabad will host next month are in full swing, as apprised by Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar on Friday.

The upper house was also told how the government will focus on priority areas within the SCO-member states with an aim to enhance cooperation in a variety of fields. Meanwhile, China’s Ambassador to Pakistan Jiang Zaidong has also expressed support from his country, the main patron of the intergovernmental political.

There remain no qualms about China emerging as the prime driver of a new business-oriented world order by providing the backbone of infrastructure linkages, reinforcing its strategic sectoral development. However, nothing screams success of any endeavour like success and no matter what the policy handouts may proclaim, true, lasting progress of Pakistan in becoming a key player of the SCO forum needed its administration to step beyond infrastructural limitations to eye increased trade with partners.

Our limited integration into the system, especially when compared to the Central Asian States, may be attributed to a wide variety of factors pertaining to geoeconomics, internal stability and security scenarios but the bottom line remains: How can Pakistan ever rise above the status of a transit country if it has yet to restore even a bare minimum of exchanges with its estranged eastern neighbour.

Beijing may make concerted efforts to enable us to fully capitalise on the given opportunities but until we bring state-of-the-art regional connectivity to the table, others will never show any inclination towards comprehensive engagement. India’s hostility, especially after PM Shahbaz Sharif participated in the virtual meeting it hosted last year, can be explained as a textbook manifestation of deadlock attributed to Modi’s doctrine, but linkages with Asian states can still be explored.

While establishing direct road or rail links with other SCO members is an extensive, time-consuming and extremely expensive exercise, especially for a cash-starved country like Pakistan, we can still prioritise air routes to connect the business community with potential markets. *