Monday, 19 December 2016

Has change in military command prompted Zardari’s return?



Has change in military command prompted Zardari’s return?


Tariq Butt

ISLAMABAD: Former President Asif Ali Zardari has based his scheduled return to Pakistan on Friday after eighteen months’ self-exile upon the premise that circumstances have greatly transformed with the change of military command.

Apparently he believes that since his hard-hitting speech targeting the then Chief of Army Staff, Raheel Sharif, without naming him, saying that they are here to stay just for three years while politicians will always remain in the field, he will not be in trouble after the outgoing top commander had hung up his boots and a new man has come in.

How far Zardari’s assumption will be true and favourable for him is anybody’s guess. Only time will make it evident what transpires for him in the days to come in this connection. However, after he realized the grave implications of his remarks and the consternation these have caused in the concerned quarters, he had tempered them saying he did not mean what was generally understood. He may have learnt a lesson and is now expected to be more circumspect while speaking on this subject.

This factor apart, there has been no significant change in ground realities for the PPP in Zardari’s prolonged absence from Pakistan. His close friend, Dr Asim Hussain, continues to be behind bars, facing trial on a host of criminal charges, and some other PPP leaders are on the run due to the fear of being caught by authorities on corruption charges. To give his telling response in his own unique style, he has appointed Dr Asim Hussain president of the PPP, Karachi division, the first ever party position allocated to him.

Bilawal has been working hard to retrieve the PPP’s lost glory but has not been very successful although he has infused confidence in the party’s rank and file to some extent. But at the same time, some of his political remarks reflect his immaturity and infantile behaviour.

However, Bilawal has still to do a lot of work to revive the party, which continues to be in a very bad shape especially in Punjab. In the interior parts of Sindh, it is a different ballgame as the PPP faces no formidable challenge from any political force. It still has a firm grip over this region regardless of the fact that Zardari is in Pakistan or abroad, and also whether Bilawal has lifted the party or not.

A big question that circulates in many minds is whether or not the stigma of worst governance and alleged corruption that Zardari carried because of his five-year misrule is still fresh in the mind of the electorate has disappeared. The answer is in the negative. Additionally, the PPP’s space has been largely effectively captured by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). Only two parties are talked about when the Punjab politics is discussed and the PPP doesn’t find even a slight mention in such debate. How far Zardari will make his party relevant is still an open question.

The main challenge before Zardari and his PPP is to take back the space that the PTI has seized. Even when the former president returns, there are no signs that the PPP is in a position to get back the lost position. Moreover, there is no possibility that with Zardari’s presence in Pakistan, the PPP will be able to cobble together an alliance with other some other political parties worth the name to post a serious threat to the Nawaz Sharif government. Its relations with the PTI are unlikely to see any change.

Zardari’s primary concern will be to brace up for the next general elections with the resolve to drastically improve on the PPP’s highly pathetic performance that it demonstrated in the 2013 polls. This period will provide him an opportunity to ponder and prepare for the grand electoral fight.

Zardari was the sole decision-maker in matters relating to the PPP as well as the Sindh government while being abroad and Bilawal was just a figurehead. In this sense, his arrival in Pakistan will hardly make any difference.

In his absence, a cluster of PPP leaders portrayed that Bilawal was now an independent decision-maker and not dependent on Zardari. They gave this impression stressing that it was better to keep the former president aside if the PPP’s state was to be improved. Now, they will be uneasy as he will be amongst them.

Anyway, Zardari’s homecoming from self-exile has belied the predictions and claims of a number of his detractors that he would never return to Pakistan. In fact, he had been looking for an opportune time to come back, and he has found the present timing for it.

Sunday, 17 May 2015

New York Times exposes Axact - owners of BoL Media Group

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/18/world/asia/fake-diplomas-real-cash-pakistani-company-axact-reaps-millions-columbiana-barkley.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=a-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

Asia Pacific

Fake Diplomas, Real Cash: Pakistani Company Axact Reaps Millions

Seen from the Internet, it is a vast education empire: hundreds of universities and high schools, with elegant names and smiling professors at sun-dappled American campuses.
Their websites, glossy and assured, offer online degrees in dozens of disciplines, like nursing and civil engineering. There are glowing endorsements on the CNN iReport website, enthusiastic video testimonials, and State Department authentication certificates bearing the signature of Secretary of State John Kerry.
“We host one of the most renowned faculty in the world,” boasts a woman introduced in one promotional video as the head of a law school. “Come be a part of Newford University to soar the sky of excellence.”
Yet on closer examination, this picture shimmers like a mirage. The news reports are fabricated. The professors are paid actors. The university campuses exist only as stock photos on computer servers. The degrees have no true accreditation.
In fact, very little in this virtual academic realm, appearing to span at least 370 websites, is real — except for the tens of millions of dollars in estimated revenue it gleans each year from many thousands of people around the world, all paid to a secretive Pakistani software company.
Photo
Axact makes tens of millions of dollars annually by offering diplomas and degrees online through hundreds of fictitious schools. Fake accreditation bodies and testimonials lend the schools an air of credibility. But when customers call, they are talking to Axact sales clerks in Karachi.
That company, Axact, operates from the port city of Karachi, where it employs over 2,000 people and calls itself Pakistan’s largest software exporter, with Silicon Valley-style employee perks like a swimming pool and yacht.
Axact does sell some software applications. But according to former insiders, company records and a detailed analysis of its websites, Axact’s main business has been to take the centuries-old scam of selling fake academic degrees and turn it into an Internet-era scheme on a global scale.
As interest in online education is booming, the company is aggressively positioning its school and portal websites to appear prominently in online searches, luring in potential international customers.
At Axact’s headquarters, former employees say, telephone sales agents work in shifts around the clock. Sometimes they cater to customers who clearly understand that they are buying a shady instant degree for money. But often the agents manipulate those seeking a real education, pushing them to enroll for coursework that never materializes, or assuring them that their life experiences are enough to earn them a diploma.
To boost profits, the sales agents often follow up with elaborate ruses, including impersonating American government officials, to persuade customers to buy expensive certifications or authentication documents.
Revenues, estimated by former employees and fraud experts at several million dollars per month, are cycled through a network of offshore companies. All the while, Axact’s role as the owner of this fake education empire remains obscured by proxy Internet services, combative legal tactics and a chronic lack of regulation in Pakistan.
“Customers think it’s a university, but it’s not,” said Yasir Jamshaid, a quality control official who left Axact in October. “It’s all about the money.”
Axact’s response to repeated requests for interviews over the past week, and to a list of detailed questions submitted to its leadership on Thursday, was a letter from its lawyers to The New York Times on Saturday. In the letter, it issued a blanket denial, accusing a Times reporter of “coming to our client with half-cooked stories and conspiracy theories.”
In an interview in November 2013 about Pakistan’s media sector, Axact’s founder and chief executive, Shoaib Ahmed Shaikh, described Axact as an “I.T. and I.T. network services company” that serves small and medium-sized businesses. “On a daily basis we make thousands of projects. There’s a long client list,” he said, but declined to name those clients.
The accounts by former employees are supported by internal company records and court documents reviewed by The New York Times. The Times also analyzed more than 370 websites — including school sites, but also a supporting body of search portals, fake accreditation bodies, recruitment agencies, language schools and even a law firm — that bear Axact’s digital fingerprints.
In academia, diploma mills have long been seen as a nuisance. But the proliferation of Internet-based degree schemes has raised concerns about their possible use in immigration fraud, and about dangers they may pose to public safety and legal systems. In 2007, for example, a British court jailed Gene Morrison, a fake police criminologist who claimed to have degree certificates from the Axact-owned Rochville University, among other places.
Little of this is known in Pakistan, where Axact has dodged questions about its diploma business and has portrayed itself as a roaring success and model corporate citizen.
“Winning and caring” is the motto of Mr. Shaikh, who claims to donate 65 percent of Axact’s revenues to charity, and last year announced plans for a program to educate 10 million Pakistani children by 2019.
More immediately, he is working to become Pakistan’s most influential media mogul. For almost two years now, Axact has been building a broadcast studio and aggressively recruiting prominent journalists for Bol, a television and newspaper group scheduled to start this year.
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A screengrab taken from the website Columbiana University. This and other Axact sites have toll-free American contact numbers and calculatedly familiar-sounding names.
Just how this ambitious venture is being funded is a subject of considerable speculation in Pakistan. Axact has filed several pending lawsuits, and Mr. Shaikh has issued vigorous public denials, to reject accusations by media competitors that the company is being supported by the Pakistani military or organized crime. What is clear, given the scope of Axact’s diploma operation, is that fake degrees are likely providing financial fuel for the new media business.
“Hands down, this is probably the largest operation we’ve ever seen,” said Allen Ezell, a retired F.B.I. agent and author of a book on diploma mills who has been investigating Axact. “It’s a breathtaking scam.”
Building a Web
At first glance, Axact’s universities and high schools are linked only by superficial similarities: slick websites, toll-free American contact numbers and calculatedly familiar-sounding names, like Barkley, Columbiana and Mount Lincoln.
But other clues signal common ownership. Many sites link to the same fictitious accreditation bodies and have identical graphics, such as a floating green window with an image of a headset-wearing woman who invites customers to chat.
There are technical commonalities, too: identical blocks of customized coding, and the fact that a vast majority route their traffic through two computer servers run by companies registered in Cyprus and Latvia.
Five former employees confirmed many of these sites as in-house creations of Axact, where executives treat the online schools as lucrative brands to be meticulously created and forcefully marketed, frequently through deception.
The professors and bubbly students in promotional videos are actors, according to former employees, and some of the stand-ins feature repeatedly in ads for different schools.
The sources described how employees would plant fictitious reports about Axact universities on iReport, a section of the CNN website for citizen journalism. Although CNN stresses that it has not verified the reports, Axact uses the CNN logo as a publicity tool on many of its sites.
Social media adds a further patina of legitimacy. LinkedIn contains profiles for purported faculty members of Axact universities, like Christina Gardener, described as a senior consultant at Hillford University and a former vice president at Southwestern Energy, a publicly listed company in Houston. In an email, a Southwestern spokeswoman said the company had no record of an employee with that name.
The heart of Axact’s business, however, is the sales team — young and well-educated Pakistanis, fluent in English or Arabic, who work the phones with customers who have been drawn in by the websites. They offer everything from high school diplomas for about $350, to doctoral degrees for $4,000 and above.
“It’s a very sales-oriented business,” said a former employee who, like several others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared legal action by Axact.
A new customer is just the start. To meet their monthly targets, Axact sales agents are schooled in tough tactics known as upselling, according to former employees. Sometimes they cold-call prospective students, pretending to be corporate recruitment agents with a lucrative job offer — but only if the student buys an online course.
A more lucrative form of upselling involves impersonating American government officials who wheedle or bully customers into buying State Department authentication certificates signed by Secretary Kerry.
Photo
Axact employees often follow up aggressively with previous customers, pushing them to buy more. Some pose as American officials, badgering clients to spend thousands of dollars on State Department authentication letters. Payments are funneled through offshore firms.
Such certificates, which help a degree to be recognized abroad, can be lawfully purchased in the United States for less than $100. But in Middle Eastern countries, Axact officials sell the documents — some of them forged, others secured under false pretenses — for thousands of dollars each.
“They would threaten the customers, telling them that their degrees would be useless if they didn’t pay up,” said a former sales agent who left Axact in 2013.
Axact tailors its websites to appeal to customers in its principal markets, including the United States and oil-rich Persian Gulf countries. One Saudi man spent over $400,000 on fake degrees and associated certificates, said Mr. Jamshaid, the former employee.
Usually the sums are less startling, but still substantial.
One Egyptian man paid $12,000 last year for a doctorate in engineering technology from Nixon University and a certificate signed by Mr. Kerry. He acknowledged breaking ethical boundaries: His professional background was in advertising, he said in a phone interview, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid potential legal trouble.
But he was certain the documents were real. “I really thought this was coming from America,” he said. “It had so many foreigner stamps. It was so impressive.”
Real-Life Troubles
Many customers of degree operations, hoping to secure a promotion or pad their résumé, are clearly aware that they are buying the educational equivalent of a knockoff Rolex. Some have been caught.
In the United States, one federal prosecution in 2008 revealed that 350 federal employees, including officials at the departments of State and Justice, held qualifications from a non-Axact-related diploma mill operation based in Washington State.
Some Axact-owned school websites have previously made the news as being fraudulent, though without the company’s ownership role being discovered. In 2013, for instance, Drew Johansen, a former Olympic swim coach, was identified in a news report as a graduate of Axact’s bogus Rochville University.
The effects have sometimes been deeply disruptive. In Britain, the police had to re-examine 700 cases that Mr. Morrison, the falsely credentialed police criminologist and Rochville graduate, had worked on. “It looked easier than going to a real university,” Mr. Morrison said during his 2007 trial.
In the Middle East, Axact has sold aeronautical degrees to airline employees, and medical degrees to hospital workers. One nurse at a large hospital in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, admitted to spending $60,000 on an Axact-issued medical degree to secure a promotion.
But there is also evidence that many Axact customers are dupes, lured by the promise of a real online education.
Elizabeth Lauber, a bakery worker from Bay City, Mich., had been home-schooled, but needed a high school diploma to enroll in college. In 2006, she called Belford High School, which had her pay $249 and take a 20-question knowledge test online.
Photo
Shoaib Ahmed Shaikh, the founder of Axact, in an image taken from social media.
Weeks later, while waiting for the promised coursework, Ms. Lauber was surprised to receive a diploma in the mail. But when she tried to use the certificate at a local college, an official said it was useless. “I was so angry,” she said by phone.
Last May, Mohan, a junior accountant at a construction firm in Abu Dhabi, paid $3,300 for what he believed was going to be an 18-month online master’s program in business administration at the Axact-owned Grant Town University.
A sales agent assured Mohan, a 39-year-old Indian citizen who asked to be identified only by part of his name, of a quality education. Instead, he received a cheap tablet computer in the mail — it featured a school logo but no education applications or coursework — followed by a series of insistent demands for more money.
When a phone caller who identified himself as an American Embassy official railed at Mohan for his lack of an English-language qualification, he agreed to pay $7,500 to the Global Institute of English Language Training Certification, an Axact-run website.
In a second call weeks later, the man pressed Mohan to buy a State Department authentication certificate signed by Mr. Kerry. Mohan charged $7,500 more to his credit card.
Then in September a different man called, this time claiming to represent the United Arab Emirates government. If Mohan failed to legalize his degree locally, the man warned, he faced possible deportation. Panicking, Mohan spoke to his sales agent at Axact and agreed to pay $18,000 in installments.
By October, he was $30,000 in debt and sinking into depression. He had stopped sending money to his parents in India, and hid his worries from his wife, who had just given birth.
“She kept asking why I was so tense,” said Mohan during a recent interview near his home in Abu Dhabi. “But I couldn’t say it to anyone.”
Chasing Bill Gates
In Pakistan, Mr. Shaikh, Axact’s chief executive, portrays himself as a self-made tycoon of sweeping ambition with a passion for charity.
Growing up in a one-room house, he said in a speech posted on the company’s website, his goal was to become “the richest man on the planet, even richer than Bill Gates.” At gala company events he describes Axact, which he founded in 1997, as a global software leader. His corporate logo — a circular design with a soaring eagle — bears a striking resemblance to the American presidential seal.
Unusual for a software entrepreneur, Mr. Shaikh does not habitually use email or a cellphone, said several people recruited to his new station, Bol.
But his ambition is undimmed: Last year he announced plans for Gal Axact, a futuristic headquarters building with its own monorail system and space for 20,000 employees. His philanthropic vision, meanwhile, has a populist streak that resonates with many Pakistanis’ frustrations with their government.
As well as promising to educate 10 million children, Mr. Shaikh last year started a project to help resolve small civil disputes — a pointed snub to the country’s sclerotic justice system — and vowed to pump billions of dollars into Pakistan’s economy.
Photo
Barkley University claims that its degrees are recognized all over the world.
“There is no power in the universe that can prevent us from realizing this dream,” he declared in the speech.
But some employees, despite the good salaries and perks they enjoyed, became disillusioned by the true nature of Axact’s business.
During three months working in the internal audit department last year, monitoring customer phone calls, Mr. Jamshaid grew dismayed by what he heard: customers being cajoled into spending tens of thousands of dollars, and tearful demands for refunds that were refused.
“I had a gut feeling that it was not right,” he said.
In October, Mr. Jamshaid quit Axact and moved to the United Arab Emirates, taking with him internal records of 22 individual customer payments totaling over $600,000.
 
Mr. Jamshaid has since contacted most of those customers, offering to use his knowledge of Axact’s internal protocols to obtain refunds. Several spurned his approach, seeing it as a fresh effort to defraud them. But a few, including Mohan, accepted his offer.
After weeks of fraught negotiations, Axact refunded Mohan $31,300 last fall.
The Indian accountant found some satisfaction, but mostly felt chastened and embarrassed.
“I was a fool,” he said, shaking his head. “It could have ruined me.”
Deception and Threats
Axact’s role in the diploma mill industry was nearly exposed in 2009 when an American woman in Michigan, angry that her online high school diploma had proved useless, sued two Axact-owned websites, Belford High School and Belford University.
The case quickly expanded into a class-action lawsuit with an estimated 30,000 American claimants. Their lawyer, Thomas H. Howlett, said in an interview that he found “hundreds of stories of people who have been genuinely tricked,” including Ms. Lauber, who joined the suit after it was established.
But instead of Axact, the defendant who stepped forward was Salem Kureshi, a Pakistani who claimed to be running the websites from his apartment. Over three years of hearings, his only appearance was in a video deposition from a dimly lit room in Karachi, during which he was barely identifiable. An associate who also testified by video, under the name “John Smith,” wore sunglasses.
Mr. Kureshi’s legal fees of over $400,000 were paid to his American lawyers through cash transfers from different currency exchange stores in Dubai, court documents show. Recently a reporter was unable to find his given address in Karachi.
Photo
A broadcast studio at Bol, a television and newspaper group owned by Axact that is scheduled to start this year. Credit Sara Farid for The New York Times
“We were dealing with an elusive and illusory defendant,” said Mr. Howlett, the lawyer for the plaintiffs.
In his testimony, Mr. Kureshi denied any links to Axact, even though mailboxes operated by the Belford schools listed the company’s headquarters as their forwarding address.
The lawsuit ended in 2012 when a federal judge ordered Mr. Kureshi and Belford to pay $22.7 million in damages. None of the damages have been paid, Mr. Howlett said.
Today, Belford is still open for business, using a slightly different website address. Former Axact employees say that during their inductions into the company, the two schools were held out as prized brands.
Axact does have regular software activities, mainly in website design and smartphone applications, former employees say. Another business unit, employing about 100 people, writes term papers on demand for college students.
But the employees say those units are outstripped by its diploma business, which as far back as 2006 was already earning Axact around $4,000 a day, according to a former software engineer who helped build several sites. Current revenues are at least 30 times higher, by several estimates, and are funneled through companies registered in places like Dubai, Belize and the British Virgin Islands.
Axact has brandished legal threats to dissuade reporters, rivals and critics. Under pressure from Axact, a major British paper, The Mail on Sunday, withdrew an article from the Internet in 2006. Later, using an apparently fictitious law firm, the company faced down a consumer rights group in Botswana that had criticized Axact-run Headway University.
 
It has also petitioned a court in the United States, bringing a lawsuit in 2007 against an American company that is a competitor in the essay-writing business, Student Network Resources, and that had called Axact a “foreign scam site.” The American company countersued and was awarded $700,000, but no damages have been paid, the company’s lawyer said.
In his interview with The New York Times in 2013, Axact’s chief executive, Mr. Shaikh, acknowledged that the company had faced criticism in the media and on the Internet in Britain, the United States and Pakistan, and noted that Axact had frequently issued a robust legal response.
“We have picked up everything, we have gone to the courts,” he said. “Lies cannot flourish like that.”
Mr. Shaikh said that the money for Axact’s new media venture, Bol, would “come from our own funds.”
With so much money at stake, and such considerable effort to shield its interests, one mystery is why Axact is ready to risk it all on a high-profile foray into the media business. Bol has already caused a stir in Pakistan by poaching star talent from rival organizations, often by offering unusually high salaries.
Mr. Shaikh says he is motivated by patriotism: Bol will “show the positive and accurate image of Pakistan,” he said last year. He may also be betting that the new operation will buy him influence and political sway.
In any event, Axact’s business model faces few threats within Pakistan, where it does not promote its degrees.
When reporters for The Times contacted 12 Axact-run education websites on Friday, asking about their relationship to Axact and the Karachi office, sales representatives variously claimed to be based in the United States, denied any connection to Axact or hung up immediately.
“This is a university, my friend,” said one representative when asked about Axact. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Griffin Palmer and Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura contributed reporting.

Tuesday, 21 April 2015

Beyond agreements . . . future projects, MOUs . . . Government & Commercial . . . Who signed what . . . Which Chinese Company will undertake which Project . . . Names of their CEOs or Concerned persons


Documents Exchange (Governmental)

SN
Deliverables
Name/Designation of Signatory
Focal Person
1
2
2
Exchange of Notes of feasibility study of the Demonstration Project of the DTMB between the Government of the People’s Republic of China and the Government of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan
Mr. Ishaq Dar,
Minister, Finance
Mr. GaoHucheng, Minister of Commerce

3
Exchange of notes on provision of Anti-Narcotics Equipment between the Government of the People’s Republic of China and the Government of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan
Mr. Ishaq Dar,
Minister, Finance
Mr. GaoHucheng, Minister of Commerce

4
Exchange of notes on provision of Law Enforcement Equipment between the Government of the People’s Republic of China and the Government of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan
Mr. Ishaq Dar,
Minister, Finance
Mr. GaoHucheng, Minister of Commerce

5
Exchange of Notes on Feasibility Study of Gwadar Hospital between the Government of the People’s Republic of China and the Government of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan
Mr. Ishaq Dar,
Minister, Finance
Mr. GaoHucheng, Minister of Commerce

6
MOU on provision of Chinese Governmental concessional Loan for second phase upgradation of Karakorum Highway (Havelian to Thakot) between Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China and Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan
Mr. Ishaq Dar,
Minister, Finance
Mr. GaoHucheng, Minister of Commerce

7
MOU on provision of Chinese Governmental concessional Loan for Karachi-Lahore Motorway (Multan to Sukur) between Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China and Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan
Mr. Ishaq Dar,
Minister, Finance
Mr. GaoHucheng, Minister of Commerce

8
MOU on provision of Chinese Governmental concessional Loan for Gwadar port East Bay Expressway Project between Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China and Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan
Mr. Ishaq Dar,
Minister, Finance
Mr. GaoHucheng, Minister of Commerce

9
MOU on provision of Chinese Governmental concessional Loan for Gwadar International Airport between Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China and Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan
Mr. Ishaq Dar,
Minister, Finance
Mr. GaoHucheng, Minister of Commerce

10
Protocol on Banking Services to Agreement on Trade in Services between the Government of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the Government of the People’s Republic of China
Engr. KhurramDastgir Khan,
Minister of Commerce
Mr. GaoHucheng, Minister of Commerce

11
MOU on provision of Material for Tackling Climate Change between National Development and Reform Commission of the People’s Republic of China and Ministry of Finance (EAD) of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan
Mr.Ishaq Dar,
Minister, Finance
Mr.XuShaoshi, Chairman, NDRC

12
Framework Agreement on Cooperation on Major Communications Infrastructure Project between the Government of the People’s Republic of China and the Government of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan
Mr.AhsanIqbal, Minister for Planning, Development and Reform
Mr.XuShaoshi
Chairman, NDRC
Maj Gen (R) Dr. Zahir Shah
Project Director, CPEC

13
MOU on Cooperation between NDRC of the People’s Republic of China and ministry of Planning Development and Reform of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan
Mr.AhsanIqbal, Minister for Planning, Development and Reform
Mr.XuShaoshi, Chairman, NDRC
Maj Gen (R) Dr. Zahir Shah
Project Director, CPEC

14
MOU on Pro Bono Projects in the Port of Gwadar Region between Ministry for Planning, Development and Reform of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China
Mr. Hassan Nawaz Tarar, Secretary , Ministry of Planning, Development and Reform
Mr.GuoYezhou
Vice Minister International Dept of the Central Committee of Communist Party
Maj Gen (R) Dr. Zahir Shah
Project Director, CPEC

15
MOU on establishment of China-Pakistan Joint Cotton Bio-Tech Laboratory between the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China and the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan
Mr. Kamran Ali Qureshi, Secretary, MOST
Mr Sun Weidong, Chinese Ambassador
Mr. Khan Muhammad Wazir
Asstt Scientific Advisor

16
Framework Agreement between the National Railway Administration, Government of the People’s Republic of China and the Ministry of Railways, Government of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan on Joint Feasibility Study for upgradation of ML1 and Establishment of HavelainDryport of Pakistan Railways
Ms.Parveen Agha
Secretary, Ministry of Railways
Mr LuDongfu
Administrator,
National Railway Administration, Govt . Of People ‘s Republic of China 
Mr. Mazhar Ali Shah
DG Planning, MoR

17
Protocol on the Establishment of China-Pakistan Joint Marine Research Center between State Oceanic Administration of the People’s Republic of China and the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan
Mr. Kamran Ali Qureshi, Secretary, MOST
Mr. Wang Hong, 
Administrator, State Oceanic Administration
Mr. Khan Muhammad Wazir
Asstt Scientific Advisor

18
MOU on cooperation between the State Administration of  Press, Publication, Radio, Films and Television of China and Ministry of Information, Broadcasting and National Heritage of Pakistan
Mr. Pervez Rasheed,
Minister for information, Broadcasting and National Heritage
MrCaiFuchao Minister State Administration, Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television
(SAPPRFT)
Adil Al Hashimy
Head Marketing & Product Development, PTV

19
Triple Party Agreement between China Central Television and PTV  and Pakistan Television Foundation on the rebroadcasting of CCTV-NEWS/CCTV -9 Documentary in Pakistan
Mr. Pervez Rasheed,
Minister for information, Broadcasting and National Heritage
Mr.CaiFuchao Minister State Administration, Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television
(SAPPRFT)
Adil Al Hashimy
Head Marketing & Product Development, PTV

20
Protocol on establishment of Sister Cities Relationship between Chengdu city Sichuan Province of PRC and Lahore City
Mr. Muhammad UsmanYounis Mayor of Lahore/ DCO Lahore
Mr Tang Liangzhi Mayor of Chengdu City
Mr. Mohammad  Jehanzeb Khan, Additional Chief Secretary Energy Punjab

21
Protocol on establishment of Sister Cities Relationship between Zhuhai City, Guangdong province of the People’s Republic of China and  Gwadar city, Balochistan of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan
Mr.BabooGulab, Chairman,Gwadar District Council
Mr Wang Qingli,
Vice Mayor of City Zhuhai

22
Protocol on establishment of Sister Cities Relationship between Karamay City, XianjianUgur, autonomous region of the People’s Republic of China and Gwadar city, Balochistan of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan
Mr.BabooGulab, Chairman,Gwadar District Council
Mr ChenXinfaMunicipal Party Secretary of Karamay city

23
Framework Agreement between NEA and MoPNRon Gwadar-Nawabshah LNG Terminal and Pipeline Project
Mr. ShahidKhaqanAbbasi,
MinisterMoPNR
Mr. XuShaoshi, Chairman NDRC
Mr. MubeenSualat, CEO ISGS





Documents Exchange (Commercial)
SN
Deliverables
Name/Designation of Signatory
Focal Person
1
2
1
Commercial  Contract on Lahore Orange Line Metro Train Project
Mr SibtainFazleHalim,
MD Metro Bus
Mr. Wen Gang, President of NORINCO Group

Mr.Lu Chun Fang, Vice President
China Railway
Mr. Mohammad  Jehanzeb Khan, Additional Chief Secretary Energy Punjab

2
Agreement on financing for Lahore Orange line Metro Train project
Mr. Muhammad SaleemSethi,
Secretary, EAD
Ms Hu Xiaolian Chairman of EXIM Bank
Mr. Mohammad  Jehanzeb Khan, Additional Chief Secretary Energy Punjab

3
MOU on financing for KKH upgradation Phase-2 (Havelian to Takot), KLM, Gwadar East Bay Expressway, Gwadar International Airport Projects
Mr. Muhammad SaleemSethi,
Secretary, EAD
Ms. Hu Xiaolin,
Chairman Exim Bank, China
Mr. Lashari
DS China

4
Financing Agreement relating to the 870 MW Hydro-Electric SukiKinari Hydropower Project between EXIM Bank of China, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Limited and SK Hydro (Private) Limited
MrHaseeb Khan
President
S.K. Hydro (Pvt.) Ltd
Ms Hu Xiaolian, Chairman
Exim Bank, China
Mr. Jiang Jianqing
President ICBC
Mr. Mahfooz Ahmad Bhatti
JS (DEV), MOWP

5
Financing Cooperation Agreement between the EXIM Bank of China and Port Qasim Electric Power Company (Private) Limited (on Port Qasim 2x660MW Coal-fired Power Plant)
Qatar AMC Company
Ms. Hu Xiaolian, Chairman
Exim Bank China
Mr. Yan Zhiyong, Chairman of Power China
Mr. Mahfooz Ahmad Bhatti
JS (DEV), MOWP

6
Framework Facility Agreement for 720MW Karot Hydropower Project between China Development Bank Corporation, EXIM Bank of China and Karot Power Company (Private) Limited
Mr. Mobashir Ahmed Malik , BOD of Karot Power company  
Ms. Hu Xiaolian, Chairman Exim Bank China
Mr. Hu Huaibang, The Board Chairman of CDB
Mr. Mahfooz Ahmad Bhatti
JS (DEV), MOWP

7
Term Sheet of the facility for Zonergy 9x100 MW solar project in Punjab between China Development Bank Corporation, EXIM Bank of China and Zonergy Company limited
Mr. Yu yong President & CEO Zonergy
Ms Hu Xiaolian,
Chairman
Exim Bank
Mr. Hu Huaibang, Chairman CDB
Mr. Mohammad  Jehanzeb Khan, Additional Chief Secretary Energy Punjab

8
Drawdown Agreement on Jhimpir wind Power project between UEP Wind power (Private) Limited as Borrower and China Development Bank Corporation as lender
Mr Tariq Khamisani
CEO
United Energy Group
Mr Hu Huaibang Chairman CDB
Corporation
Mr. Mahfooz Ahmad Bhatti
JS (DEV), MOWP

9
Terms and Conditions in favor of Sindh Engro Coal Mining Company for Thar Block II 3.8Mt/a mining Project, Sindh province, Pakistan Arranged by China Development Bank Corporation
MrKhursheedJamali, Chairman
Sindh Engro Coal Mining Company Limited 
Mr Hu Huaibang, Chairman CDB Corporation

Mr. Mahfooz Ahmad Bhatti
JS (DEV), MOWP

10
Terms and Conditions in favor of EngroPowergenThar (Private) Limited, Sindh province, Pakistan for Thar Block II 2x330MW Coal Fired Power Project Arranged by China Development Bank Corporation
Mr. HussainDawood Chairman Engro Corp
Mr. Hu Huaibang, Chairman of CDB
Mr. Mahfooz Ahmad Bhatti
JS (DEV), MOWP

11
Framework Agreement of Financing Cooperation in Implementing the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor between China Development Corporation and HBL
Nauman K. Dar, CEO HBL
Hu Huaibang, Chairman CDB
Mr. Zeeshan
DGM Corporate

12
MOU with respect to Cooperation between WAPDA and CTG
MrZafarMehmood, Chairman, WAPDA
Mr Lu Chun
Chairman
China Three Gorges
Mr. Mahfooz Ahmad Bhatti
JS (DEV), MOWP

13
MOU among PPIB, CTG, and Silk Road Fund on Development of Private Hydro Power Projects
Mr Shah JahanMirza,
MD PPIB
Mr Lu Chun Chairman CTG

Madam Jin Qi Chair of Board, Silk Road
Mr. Mahfooz Ahmad Bhatti
JS (DEV), MOWP

14
Facility operating Agreement for Dawood Wind Power project between ICBC and PCC of China and HDPPL
Mr. RafiqDawood, Chairman of Hydro China Dawood
Mr Jiang Jianqiang chairman ICBC
Mr. Mahfooz Ahmad Bhatti
JS (DEV), MOWP

15
Framework Agreement for Promoting Chinese Investments and industrial Parks Developments in Pakistan between ICBC and HBL on financial services corporation
Mr.Sultan Allana
Chairman Habib Bank Limited (HBL)
Mr. Jiang Jianqing Chairman ICBC
Mr. Zeeshan
DGM Corporate

16
The financing term sheet agreement for Thar Block –I between ICBC, SSRL
Mr.ShahrayarChishtiVice-Chairman SSRL
Mr Jiang Jianqiang chairman ICBC
Mr. Mahfooz Ahmad Bhatti
JS (DEV), MOWP

17
Energy Strategic Cooperation Framework Agreement between Punjab Province of Pakistan and China Huaneng Group
Mr. Mohammad  Jehanzeb Khan, Additional Chief Secretary Energy Punjab
Mr Cao Peixi, President
China Huaneng Group
Mr. Mohammad  Jehanzeb Khan, Additional Chief Secretary Energy Punjab

18
Framework Agreement on the China Pakistan Economic Corridor Energy Project Cooperation Between Ministry of Water & Power and China Export & Credit Insurance Corporation (SINOSURE)
Khawaja Muhammad Asif Minister for Water & Power
Mr Wang Yi, Chairman
Sinosure
Mr. Mahfooz Ahmad Bhatti
JS (DEV), MOWP

19
Cooperation Agreement between Sino-Sindh Resources (Pvt.) Ltd and Shanghai Electric Group for Thar Coalfield Block I Coal-Power integrated Project in Pakistan
MrHok Ming, Chairman, SSRL
Mr Huang Dinan,
Chairman
SEG
Mr. Mahfooz Ahmad Bhatti
JS (DEV), MOWP

22
Cooperation Agreement for Matiyari-Lahore and Matyari (Port Qasim)-Faisalabad Transmission and Transformation Project between National Transmission Distribution Company (NTDC) and National  Grid of China
Mohammad YounusDagha Secretary Ministry of Water & Power
MrShuYinbiao,
President State Grid, China
Mr. Mahfooz Ahmad Bhatti
JS (DEV), MOWP

23
IA on Port Qasim Coal fired Power Plant between Power China and GoP
Mohammad YounusDagha, Secretary Water and Power
Mr Yan Zhiyong Chairman Power China
Mr. Mahfooz Ahmad Bhatti
JS (DEV), MOWP

24
Facility Agreement for the Sahiwal Coal-fired Power Plant Project between industrial and Commercial Bank of China Limited, Huaneng Shandong Electricity limited and Shandong Ruyi Group
Mr. Wang Wenzong, General Manager of Huaneng Shandong
Mr. QiuYafu, Chairman of Shandong Ruyi Group
Mr. Jiang Jianqing, Chairman of ICBC
Mr. Mahfooz Ahmad Bhatti
JS (DEV), MOWP

25
Cooperation Agreement on Hubco Coal-fired Power Plant Project between CPIH and Hubco Power company
Mr. Khalid Mansoor, CEO
Hub Power Company
Mr. Yu Bing, President China Power International Holding Limited
Mr. Mahfooz Ahmad Bhatti
JS (DEV), MOWP

26
Facilitation Agreement on Salt Range Coal-fired Power Project between CMEC and Punjab Government
DrArshadMahmood, Secretary Mines & Minerals Punjab
Mr. Sun Bai
Chairman
China Machinery Engineering Corp
Mr. Mahfooz Ahmad Bhatti
JS (DEV), MOWP

27
MOU Between NUML Pakistan and Xinjian Normal University , Urumqi China for Cooperation on Higher Education
Major General (R) MasoodHasan, Rector NUML
Mr. WeiliBalati, Principal of Xinjian Normal University

28
Agreement on collaboration on establishment of NUML International  Center of education (NICE) between NUML Pakistan and Xinjian Normal University , URUMQI China
Major General (R) MasoodHasan, Rector NUML
Mr. WeiliBalati, Principal of Xinjian Normal University

29
MoU between China National Complete Engineering Corporation and Pakistan Board of Investment
(NEW ADDITION PROPOSED BY BOI)
Dr. Miftah Ismail,
Minister of State/Chairman, BOI
Mr. Sun Bai, Chairman , China National Complete Engineering Corporation
Dr. Rania, DG BOI