‘CPEC not a debt trap’ Islamabad March 12, 2021 Islamabad: China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is not a debt trap as all projects in the energy sector are investments and loans constitute only a small proportion of the overall CPEC portfolio, said Dr Ishrat Hussain, adviser to the Prime Minister on Institutional Reforms and Austerity. Dr Ishrat was speaking at a seminar on ‘Upscaling the economic activities of CPEC: opportunities and challenges,’organised by Institute of Regional Studies here. Dr Ishrat said that the Chinese loans were on concessional rates of 2.34 per cent. He observed that completed CPEC energy projects had already added 5,320 MW to the power generation capacity in Pakistan with an investment of $7.9 billion. He added that a capacity of 4,440 MW would be added through an investment of another $9.55 billion. He said that the total tally of all projects under CPEC was around $52 billion. He added that plans for upgrading the transmission and distribution networks were already in the pipeline.