Turkish hi speed trains. Coming soon to Pakistan!

For all the negative crap in the media about Pakistan, you wouldn’t know news from reality until you kept your eye on the massive economic and infrastructure deals Pakistan’s been busy inking! Pakistan and Turkey, in particular, have really stepped up joint projects in the recent past. I’ve been trying to keep up with various civil and military initiatives that the two countries are undertaking and it’s getting to be quite a list. For example, the upgradation of Pakistan Air Force F-16 jets in Turkey and the potential purchase of ATAK T-129 gunship helicopters from Turkey’s TAI Aselsan corporation are just two examples. Collaboration on the construction of Pakistan’s huge Bhasha Hydroelectric Dam and expansion of Turkish banks into Pakistan are two others.

However, today’s announcements trumps everything else. Meeting with President Zardari in Ankara, President Abdullah Gul announced that Pakistan, Iran and Turkey will be working on an over $20B project to significantly uprade the rail infrastructure in all three countries and create a single integrated line that will connect Pakistan directly with the EU.

By avoiding the slow ocean route and the very expensive aerial route, rail links will open new avenues of cooperation and growth for companies in all three countries. Not only will this link give a significant boost to Pak-Turk trade, but also to Pak-Iran economic ties. In fact, this would be the third significant infrastructure project Pakistan has embarked on that involves Iran. The first being the supply of electricity via Iranian power plants to several parts of Baluchistan, next in line is the massive Iran Pakistan (soon to be IPC, or Iran Pakistan China) oil pipeline project and now this rail initiative.

Now if only India would work diligently towards settling its outstanding issues with Pakistan. Perhaps it too could benefit from the Iran Pakistan pipeline, and direct rail links to the EU!

Here’s more from The News:

A comprehensive presentation was given to the Pakistani and Turkish Presidents on the 6,566 kilometres Rail project from Islamabad to Istanbul, via Tehran, with 1,990 kilometres track situated in Pakistan, 2,570 kilometres in Iran and 2,006 kilometres in Turkey.

“This rail link will strengthen Pakistan’s economy as well as people to people ties with not only brotherly Muslim countries but also onwards to Europe”, remarked President Zardari who floated the Islamabad-Istanbul cargo train idea last year when an experimental train was run on the route on his initiative on August 14.

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China launches the world's fastest train...

Let me just start off by saying that the Chinese rock! And what I wouldn’t give to ride this amazing new piece of technology they’ve unveiled; the fastest train in the world. This bad boy hits 394.2 kph without breaking a sweat and links Wuhan in central China with Guangzhou in the country’s south. That’s a whopping 1,068 kms of track! China is the world’s foremost railroad builder now, with plans to lay over 16,000 additional kilometers of track before the year 2020. That is, assuming of course, that the Mayans were wrong.

The new train is completely designed and manufactured in China and is one of the many fruits of gigantic investments in this area. In 2009 alone, China invested $50BN in its high speed rail system which is fast becoming a new wonder of the world.

A map showing railroads in China. The length and breadth of the country can conveniently be traveled via high speed rail!

According to Wikipedia:

In 2009, the People’s Republic of China announced plans to build 35 high-speed routes by 2012. Around 13,000 km of high-speed railways, capable of handling trains at between 200 and 350 km/h would be completed and put into service by 2012. Mainland China’s railways were among the main beneficiaries of the government’s 4-trillion-yuan ($585 billion) stimulus package.

At least five routes are to accommodate trains traveling at speeds of 350 km/h. So far, the People’s Republic of China has built 185 km of track capable of handling 350 km/h trains, including the link between Beijing and Tianjin, which opened shortly before the 2008 Olympic Games. The five lines include three north-south routes: Beijing-Shanghai; Beijing-Hong Kong; and Beijing-Harbin (via Shenyang and Changchun). The two east-west high-speed lines are Xuzhou-Lanzhou and Shanghai-Kunming. The five lines along with three other lines with a designed speed of between 200 and 350 km/h, will become the trunk lines of China’s future high-speed passenger rail network.

The list of China/Pakistan joint ventures and partnerships is longer than what we could do justice to here. Most notably, recently China has also partnered with Pakistan on railway modernization. Truth be told, seeing these new high speed trains get commissioned in China make my mouth water and I hope similar initiatives are planned soon in Pakistan also.

We wish our Chinese brothers the very best of luck with their amazing pace of modernization and development. Pakistan wishes you well!

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Intel is celebrating 10 years of success in Pakistan. That is a major landmark, but one that tells only part of the story. Intel came to Pakistan way back in 1990, through a partnership with Lahore based “Global Systems”. Many of you who were active in the IT community at the time will remember the tall building alongside the Cavalry business boulevard, adorned with a big blue Intel logo. Global Systems was run by a former Intel business development executive, Haider Raza, who moved to Pakistan and started the distributorship.

The story of Global Systems, which few will remember now, tells the tale of the old Pakistan – the pre-Musharraf Pakistan – where business deals were seldom as easy or as transparent, especially when they involved a government department. Initially Global Systems was met with a lot of consumer success, and in fact introduced not just the mainstream Intel processor products, but also innovative products like the Intel Inboard 386 upgrade XT card. It was only once they got involved with large transactions with organizations such as Pakistan Railway, that they ran into trouble. The Railways awarded Global Systems with a contract for a large number of Intel based desktop PCs. At the time, it was close to a Rs. 1 crore transaction – about half a million in 1990 dollars, the equivalent of at least a $3-4 million transaction today. Once Global Systems had delivered the equipment to the Railways, the latter refused to pay. The whole issue ended up in court and guess who had an edge because of their size? (hint: it wasn’t Global Systems) Ultimately, this sounded the death knell for the company. One of the first entrepreneurial sagas of the post-PC era.

The celebration today marks Intel’s own corporate presence in Pakistan now for 10 running years. A period marked with a lot of success for the company. Pakistan promises to become a major user of Intel chips over the next few years, with a high growth rate in PC usage. So here’s to another 10 years of success in Pakistan, and with that, here’s a salute to Global Systems and other entrepreneurial efforts of its ilk that blazed a trail for IT companies that came later. They did so despite the much less friendly market conditions and at times, antagonistic policies… all that has changed since, but life is never easy for the entrepreneur. High risk, high reward!

Cheers to all the high rollers out there.

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