Eight years after the official launch of port operations the port lags behind other China-built ports in Sri Lanka, Nigeria and Cameroon. Barely any vessel calls at Gwadar. The Pakistani state burdened itself with high interest loans as part of the multibillion-dollar CPEC transport and energy infrastructure project. However, the port “remains a non-starter” and as some have called it, a “white elephant instead of becoming a regional transshipment hub.”
The Shahbaz Sharif government is trying to change this by ordering the re-routing of 60 percent of all public sector cargoes through Gwadar. However, as an editorial in Dawn noted, “That is unlikely to happen anytime soon due to capacity constraints and much higher cost of transportation from Gwadar to the rest of the country compared with Karachi.”
As the editorial warned “a market plan, no matter how grand, cannot improve the security situation in Balochistan or bring peace to Afghanistan, without which it is impossible to get business from Central Asia. Nor can it convince China to relocate its industry here for export westward or start importing oil through Gwadar. Moreover, it won’t help address the capacity and power supply issues that constrain trade through the port. Unless the issues containing the potential of Gwadar are addressed, no executive order or marketing plan can make the port city a regional shipping and trade hub.”
