Pak-China Institute hosts conference on “ASEAN-to-Pakistan Pathways” to attract Chinese solar investment

ISLAMABAD, Mar 03 (APP): Pakistan-China Institute hosted a regional conference titled “ASEAN-to-Pakistan Pathways: Attracting Chinese Investment for Solar PV Value-Chain Manufacturing” under the Green CPEC Alliance, bringing together policymakers and regional experts to translate ASEAN’s solar manufacturing experience into actionable lessons for Pakistan.
Mustafa Hyder Sayed, Executive Director of the Pakistan-China Institute, delivered the welcome remarks, placing the conference within the broader strategic shifts reshaping solar manufacturing and investment flows, including global and regional solar manufacturing rebalancing, post-tariff adjustments in ASEAN, and China’s overseas cleantech push. His remarks framed why the Green CPEC Alliance is convening this dialogue now, as countries compete to attract mobile solar PV value-chain investment through a combination of industrial policy and credible delivery capacity. He set the direction for the day’s discussion around translating ASEAN’s practical experience into actionable lessons for Pakistan, with a focus on what makes manufacturing decisions bankable in real terms, such as clarity of the policy and execution package, readiness of SEZ offerings, and alignment between investment facilitation and on-ground implementation.
Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed, Chairman, Pakistan-China Institute, in his keynote, underscored that Pakistan’s solar growth is increasingly tied to China’s industrial power, citing imports of around 17 GW of solar panels in 2024 and about 17.9 GW in FY25, taking total imports beyond 50 GW by September 2025, while Pakistan’s share of China’s solar exports rose to about 12 percent in 2025 from 2 percent in 2022. He highlighted solar’s impact on energy security, noting solar provided about 25.3 percent of Pakistan’s utility electricity between January and April 2025, and framed cheap Chinese solar as a one-time strategic window as global solar installations reached around 597 GW in 2024 and module prices fell to $0.07 to $0.09 per watt in 2024 and early 2025, while cautioning that production cuts and policy shifts could raise prices by around 9 percent by late 2025.
He further emphasized China’s dominance of more than 80 percent of global solar manufacturing capacity supported by over $50 billion in investment and roughly 300,000 jobs, and linked solar geopolitics to water and resource pressures, citing about 283,000 net-metering consumers by December 2024, around 2.8 to 4.1 GW net-metered capacity, around 650,000 solar-powered tube wells, and a 30 percent expansion in rice cultivation since 2023, with implications for water security and future dependence on batteries and critical minerals.
Dr. Shezra Mansab Ali Kharal, Minister of State for Climate Change, in her keynote on “Pakistan’s Solar Demand Shock: Why Manufacturing is the Next Frontier,” highlighted that Pakistan’s solar demand is import-driven, citing approximately 51.5 GW of solar modules imported from China by November 2025, following about 16.6 GW in 2024 and just over 10 GW more in the first four months of 2025. She noted deployment is now largely behind-the-meter with estimates of about 27 to 33 GW deployed across segments, while official net-metering reached 6.8 GW (September 2025), up from more than 2.2 GW and 156,372+ prosumer facilities as of June 2024, and reinforced that solar supplied 25.3 percent of Pakistan’s utility electricity in January to April 2025, with emerging “negative daytime demand” signals in Lahore, Faisalabad and Sialkot driving tariff and market reform pressures. She pointed to economics flipping fast as module prices fell to around $0.08 per watt by 2025 and customs valuation reset to $0.08 to $0.09 per watt, and framed manufacturing as an FX and value-retention imperative, noting import costs exceeded $2 billion by June 2025.
Muhammad Umar Farooq, Senior Research Associate, Pakistan-China Institute, noted that the global solar value chain has entered a phase where trade policy, industrial policy, and geopolitics shape investment decisions as much as technology and cost, and that major markets are pushing manufacturing rebalancing away from single-country concentration due to trade measures and supply-chain security concerns. He emphasized that ASEAN’s advantage came from combining incentives with execution speed and export logic, that bankability requires enforceable commitments rather than announcements, and that Pakistan’s opportunity depends on sequencing, starting with what is investable now and deepening localization over time, while translating these realities into a credible policy and execution package to attract the next wave of Chinese solar PV value-chain investment.
Dr. Christoph Nedopil, Director, Griffith Asia Institute, contributed to Session I by focusing on the conditions that made ASEAN a preferred destination for Chinese solar manufacturing, emphasizing the role of credible investment facilitation, execution readiness, and the broader logic of China’s overseas cleantech push, while guiding discussion on what Pakistan must prioritize first to compete for the next wave of manufacturing investment, including closing gaps related to policy stability, SEZ execution, logistics, and investor risk protection.
N. A. Zuberi, Senior Advisor, CSAIL, highlighted that while incentives matter, investors ultimately require speed, certainty, and enforceability, emphasizing that Pakistan’s competitiveness will depend on defining a minimum “investor-ready” package that converts interest into committed capital and avoiding common policy promises that later backfire when implementation realities, approvals, or infrastructure delivery do not match advertised timelines.
Dr. Marlistya Citraningrum, Director of Communication and Outreach, IESR, discussed how countries such as Indonesia have sought to build domestic industry while staying attractive to foreign manufacturers, emphasizing that Pakistan must balance industrial ambition, including local content and value-add objectives, with bankability and investability for Chinese and other manufacturers, and that sequencing and predictability are essential to avoid deterring investors while domestic capabilities scale.
Lam Pham, Energy Analyst, Asia, Ember, discussed ASEAN’s role in attracting Chinese solar manufacturing through tariff-jumping FDI to bypass anti-dumping and anti-subsidy measures, leveraging trade agreements with major markets, strategic proximity to China’s supply chain, competitive fiscal incentives, and industrial ecosystem readiness including logistics, infrastructure, workforce, reliable power, and water. He emphasized that Pakistan can strengthen its pathway by focusing on “invest this year, operate this year” execution, diversifying export markets due to shifting trade barriers such as US tariff moves affecting ASEAN in April 2025, investing in R&D to move up the value chain, and pursuing a staged approach from panels to higher-value segments like cells and wafers, including using duty structures that protect early manufacturing while keeping inputs competitive.
Dr. Erfa Iqbal, Additional Secretary / EDG-II, Board of Investment, addressed Pakistan’s execution challenges and highlighted the importance of removing bottlenecks that prevent SEZs from becoming genuinely plug-and-play for investors, focusing discussion on what can be realistically fixed within 6 to 12 months to improve delivery certainty, reduce friction in approvals, and strengthen investor confidence in on-ground execution.
Xu Tianqi, Deputy Director, Area Studies Department, RDCY, provided a Chinese-side perspective that despite CPEC framing, manufacturing decisions still depend on risk, returns, and execution certainty, emphasizing what would make a Chinese private solar manufacturer commit to Pakistan and what risks must be neutralized through credible risk protection, clear processes, and dependable implementation of the promised industrial package.
Mark Lister, Co-CEO, Asia Clean Energy Partners, emphasized that Pakistan’s PV boom reflects strong market signals but manufacturing investment requires long-term policy certainty, strategic targeting within the supply chain rather than attempting to build every segment immediately, and diversification of target markets rather than over-reliance on a single export destination. He outlined a stepwise industrial approach beginning with module assembly, mounting structures, BOS components, and potentially inverters, with longer-term progression into polysilicon, wafers, and cells, and highlighted workforce upskilling, industrial parks and SEZ clustering, recycling as a future value-add opportunity, and the need for structured collaboration and ongoing exchange with Chinese stakeholders to align policy, skills, and investment mobilization.
Linh Hua, Ministry of Energy, Vietnam, provided a short overview of Vietnam’s solar market evolution and highlighted policy and investment experiences aimed at improving project bankability, including measures related to revenue certainty, grid integration and curtailment risk, and approaches to permitting and offtaker risk management, while sharing transferable principles relevant to Pakistan’s investment readiness without offering country-specific prescriptions beyond Vietnam’s experience.
The conference brought together a diverse audience from think tanks, media, policy circles, and the private sector, reflecting the cross-cutting nature of Pakistan’s solar industrialisation agenda. The mix of stakeholders helped ground the dialogue in both policy priorities and commercial realities, ensuring that lessons from ASEAN and expectations from investors were discussed alongside Pakistan’s on-ground implementation constraints.