After a decade, govt wakes up to market Gwadar port

The commercialisation of Gwadar Port, built more than a decade ago, remains a non-starter, turning the multi-billion-dollar infrastructure facility into a white elephant instead of becoming a transhipment hub. This was the gist of a high-level meeting on the operationalisation of Gwadar Port called on the directives of the prime minister and presided over by Planning and Dev­elopment Minister Ahsan Iqbal, who blamed high-ups of the Ministry of Mari­time Affairs (MoMA) and National Logis­tics Cell (NLC) for lack of marketing and non-professional handling of ‘crown jewel’ of $50bn China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. Highly informed sources said all the stakeholders, including the government, were at unease over the fact that Gwadar had not kept pace with similar other facilities in the region and thus did not offer promised business and employment opportunities to the locals in the absence of trade activities. This, coupled with poor civic facilities like water and electricity shortages, they believed, was being exploited by external factors, leading to repeated unrest and protests.