China and Pakistan today signed a USD two billion agreement to jointly build a massive coal- fired power station in Pakistan's southern Sindh province.
The project will cost in excess USD 2 billion, including the exploitation of a 3.8-million-tonne coal mine and the construction of a 660,000-kilowatt power station near the mine, China's state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
China will contribute USD 800 million to the financing, while the Pakistani partners will provide USD 500 million, mainly through China Development Bank and Habib Bank.
The project is expected to be completed by the end of 2017, and it will be the first such project in the China- Pakistan Economic Corridor.
The corridor will be a 3,000-kms long network of roads, railways and energy infrastructure between the ports of Gwadar in Pakistan and Kashgar in China's Xinjiang.
It was established to help lift Pakistan out of its economic slumber and boost growth for the Chinese border economy.
(Reopens FGN12)
Meanwhile, state-run China Daily today reported that Xi on a visit to Ningxia Hui autonomous region, the home for Hui Muslims, asked Chinese Muslims to practice their religion as part of Chinese society and direction, and resist illegal religious infiltration and carry forward the patriotic tradition.
"Religions in our country, the endemic ones and those from abroad, have become deeply embedded in the Chinese civilisation, whose history covers more than 5,000 years," he said while visiting a mosque in Yinchuan, the capital of Ningxia.
"They (religions) will continue to flourish only by taking root here," he said.
More than 2.4 million Muslims live in Ningxia, a region that boasts of more than 5,000 religious sites, nearly 4,391 of them Islamic, the report said.
