beijing china on tuesday played down reports of pakistans plans to cut down a railway project under the multibillion dollar cpec by 2 billion saying prime minister imran khan has assured his support to the various projects under the flagship belt and road initiativepakistans railways minister sheikh rashid recently announced plans to cut the 82 billion karachipeshawar railway project by about 2 billionit is the biggest project under the 50 billion china pakistan economic corridor cpec which india opposes as it is being laid through pakistanoccupied kashmiron sunday khan said pakistan is reviewing the projects under the cpec to safeguard the interest of the people in balochistan provincekhan in the past criticised former prime minister nawaz sharif for the lack of transparency and corruption in the cpec projectshe said that balochistan had a number of reservations about the mega projectasked about pakistans plans to cut down the railway projects over fears of accumulating debt chinese foreign ministry spokesman lu kang told media on tuesday that the new pakistan government has expressed its support for the cpec projectsyou have only noted some aspects of the report recently on the advancement of the cpec we have noted that there are different comments and reports coming from the mediayou can see that the new pakistani government and prime minister khan has made it clear that they will support the advancement of the cpec lu saidhe was apparently referring to the assurances by the new government in islamabad about the continuation of the cpec projects during the recent visit of chinese foreign minister wang yi to pakistanlu said the cpec served the economic and social development and referred to the international monetary fund imf report which he said made it clear that the advancement of the cpec did not cause any burden to pakistanthe imf also said the cpec from a longterm perspective will enhance pakistans capacity for the development he said adding that all the projects were conceived after extensive consultations with pakistanabout the comments by some pakistan officials to cut down the cost of the projects he said we should view such comments in a comprehensive way actually the advancement of the cpec is conducive to the interconnectivity and prosperity of the region including pakistanwe hope you can see that the cpec is very important project of the belt and road initiative bri li addedchina had announced after the visit of wang to pakistan in september that the cpec projects will be extended to the western areas of pakistan which included balochistanthe cpec is the flagship project of the multibillion dollar bri a pet project of president xi jinping aimed at enhancing chinas influence around the world through chinafunded infrastructure projects