The Pulse | Economy | South Asia

Infrastructure Gaps Test Pakistan’s Flagship CPEC Industrial Zone, Field Survey Finds

Even as investment tops 327 billion rupees, firms at Allama Iqbal Industrial City report inadequate wastewater infrastructure, unreliable utilities, and no public transport.

Allama Iqbal Industrial City in Faisalabad, Pakistan.

FAISALABAD — Allama Iqbal Industrial City (AIIC), the first Special Economic Zone prioritized under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), has drawn more than 327 billion rupees ($1.2 billion) in committed investment and allotted 223 of 424 planned plots. But a field survey of the zone’s authority and four operating firms – including a China-Pakistan joint venture – found that basic infrastructure has not kept pace with that investment. The zone management itself now lists the resulting gaps among its most urgent priorities.

The survey was conducted on-site using structured research instruments and covered Faisalabad Industrial Estate Development & Management Company (FIEDMC), which administers the 3,966-acre zone along the M-4 Motorway, and four operating firms; the findings are diagnostic rather than statistically representative. It found that water is supplied only through self-boring – individual firms drilling and managing their own wells – because no zone-wide piped potable network exists. Sewerage infrastructure remains under construction, while the zone’s assessment indicates that no Combined Effluent Treatment Plant (CETP) has yet been funded, leaving firms to manage industrial wastewater largely on their own.

“CETP and utility reliability” was the single most urgent reform named by FIEDMC’s own senior officials – spanning its general manager for engineering and its estate, zone, and land managers – when asked directly what the AIIC needs most. They also flagged the need to make the zone’s “One-Window Operation” facilitation service fully functional and time-bound, and to establish dedicated public transport and stronger security for workers commuting to the site.

Those official priorities broadly align with concerns reported by the four tenant firms surveyed independently. Ocean Ceramics, a wall-tile manufacturer employing 230 people at the AIIC since 2022, said in its response that “transport facilities are not available for local travelling” and that mobile signal and internet coverage across the zone is weak and slow – potentially constraining firms that increasingly depend on digital systems for customs filling and coordination with overseas buyers. The firm reported annual revenue of 1-5 billion rupees, but currently exports none of its output. Ocean Ceramics said reduced gas and electricity costs would do more than anything else to improve its performance.

A China-Pakistan steel joint venture that entered the zone in 2024 with 88 employees reported similar concerns about shared infrastructure, rating the zone’s common effluent-treatment and testing facilities only average. 

Among the zone officials surveyed, customs facilitation ranked as........

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