Pakistan won't back out from its friendship with China: Asad Umar

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan will not back out of its friendship with China, said Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Reforms Asad Umar, on Saturday.

The federal minister was addressing a press conference where he said that Pakistan will not be caught up in a fight between two other entities.

"A lot of conspiracies have taken place against CPEC," he said, referring to the energy corridor that links Pakistan's Gwadar port to th Xinjiang province in China.

Umar said that Pakistan was 'going from roads to industries' in the CPEC project.

China says it will never push Pakistan to repay debt on time 

Chinese envoy Yao Jing on Friday rejected US Acting Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Alice Wells’ recent statement regarding the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), saying that Beijing will never force Islamabad to make timely payments of its debt, unlike the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

"If Pakistan is in need, China would never ask it to repay its loans in time," while on the other hand the International Monetary Fund, mainly governed by the West, is strict in its repayment system," said Jing, the Chinese ambassador to Pakistan, during his address to the 5th CPEC Media Forum in Islamabad.

He asked where Washington was in 2013 when Pakistan faced a shortfall of energy, and why it did not invest in Pakistan’s power sector despite knowing the country’s dire need for electricity.