This is apropos of my letter `Alternative energy projects with China` (July 14). The forthcoming Pakistan-China renewable energy exchange is quite promising and a way forward to control energy crisis.

Although the Pakistan Chinese economic connectivity would be very productive, it is limited in its scope when more could be reaped from this exchange.

Other than resolving the looming energy crisis and economic profit, alternative energy investments could be conditioned on technology transfer and also utilising local resources such as local technology wherever possible, indigenous technicians and labourers.

This would result in the transfer of technical knowledge to our human capital who would gain expertise; with technology transfer, a local industry based on renewable energy technology would develop.

Consequently, industrialisation would lead to employment, research and development, new market and product development that in turn would stimulate new industries. Hence, drastic social and economic uplift would be evident.

The need of the time is to devise meticulous strategies to gain maximum benefits from these FDIs in both the short and the long term.

We need to decide whether we want to adhere to self-sustenance or dependency, because we cannot just abandon our nation at the mercy of foreign direct investments to solve our problems.

Currently, due to the urgent need to resolve the power crisis, many irrational decisions are being taken that would resolve the power predicament in the short term but would hurt us severely in the long term when all the nations of the world would have undergone the paradigm shift of renewable energy.

Indigenisation of technology and liberation from reliance on our foreign allies could pave the way towards social, economic and political prosperity.

JAYA S. LOUNGANI
Karachi