The M6 is a proposed north–south motorway in Pakistan, which will connect Sukkur to Hyderabad. The 296 km long M-6 motorway is the only missing vital link of North to South connectivity, i.e. From Karachi to Peshawar. The motorway will cost approximately $1.7 billion to build. The M-6 will be a 6-lane motorway with a design speed of 120 km/hour, 89 bridges, 15 interchanges and 243 underpasses. The project is to be built as part of the larger Eastern Alignment of the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor. The construction contract was awarded in July 2017 however, construction is not started yet due to pending Government and NHA decision. All the other segments of 1650 km Peshawar Karachi Motorway have been completed except Hyderabad-Sukkur Motorway section of PKM. 63% land acquisition has been Completed. Planned time to complete this 296 km long motorway is 33 months. China State Construction Engineering won the project after bidding process in May 2017 with anticipated ground work to be started by August 2017 and finish the same by December 2019. On 16 July 2020,The Ecnec meeting presided over by Adviser to the Prime Minister on Finance and Revenue Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh gave a go-ahead to the construction of the 306-kilometre-long Hyderabad-Sukkur Motor-way at a cost of Rs165.67bn
Route
At its southern terminus, the M6 motorway will connect to the M9 motorway at Jamshoro for onward connections to Karachi. The route will then course towards the northeast, and connect to the N55 Indus Highway via an interchange. It will continue to course towards the northeast to connect to the city of Hyderabad, via an intersection with the N-5 National Highway. From there the road will course towards the north towards the cities of Matiari, Tando Adam, Shahdadpur and Nawabshah in central Sindh. It will then continue northwards towards Khairpur, and finally course northeast again towards the city of Rohri, which lies across the Indus River from Sukkur in northern Sindh province. From Rohri, a controlled access motorway will continue onwards towards Multan and Islamabad.
Financing
Construction of the motorway is to cost an estimated $1.7 billion. While the government of China has extended low interest concessionary loans to cover large portions of CPEC infrastructure projects, the government of Pakistan in July 2016 decided to allow international bidding for the project, citing difficulty meeting Pakistan's required financial contributions for utilization of concessionary Chinese loans. Chinese and South Korean companies have reportedly shown early interest in the project.
Interchanges
Update
The government decided to handover Rs 204 billion worth of Sukkur-Hyderabad Motorway to the private sector on BOT basis. Under the decision, the “private party will finance construction of the project, operate it for a defined concession period and transfer it back to National Highway Authority, at no cost at the end of concession period of 25 years,” a senior government official said who attended a meeting of the board of directors of Public Private Partnership Authority. The Sukkur-Hyderabad Motorway M6, a project under the NHA, is estimated to cost Rs204bn and take 33 months to complete.
