PM Shehbaz discusses need for ML-1 railway project's early groundbreaking in meeting with ADB official

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif discussed the need for Karachi-Peshawar Main Railway Line’s (ML-1) early groundbreaking with Asian Development Bank (ADB) South, Central, and West Asia Vice President Yingming Yang on Friday. The premier and the visiting ADB official held a meeting in Islamabad, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) said in a statement, adding that a central focus of the discussion was the modernisation of ML-1. The long-delayed project was a “vital national infrastructure priority”, the statement said. During the meeting, PM Shehbaz stressed that upgrading the project was essential for modernising freight logistics, strengthening regional trade connectivity and supporting major industrial initiatives, it said. Moreover, the “meeting discussed the need for the early groundbreaking of ML-1, being vital for infrastructure development and modernising the connectivity”, it added. The $10 billion ML-1 project is among the public-private partnership initiatives for which Pakistan is seeking ADB’s scaled-up financing. Pakistan has already secured $2bn in financing from the Manila-based lending agency for the Karachi-Rohri section of the 1670-km ML-1 project, which is under implem