Gwadar: Pakistan’s port of dreams stuck in doldrums

Touted as a ‘game changer’ and centerpiece of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, Gwadar Port still struggles with low traffic, missing industries, and scant investment

Mushfiq Ahmed

KARACHI, Pakistan (MNTV) – On September 25, as the world marks World Maritime Day and reflects on the oceans that carry 90% of global trade, Pakistan’s maritime conversation invariably circles back to a single name: Gwadar.

The deep-water port on the Arabian Sea was once held up as Pakistan’s great maritime leap. Nestled just 600 kilometers east of the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil passes, Gwadar seemed destined to become a magnet for shipping, energy pipelines, and industry. 

Two decades after its inauguration, however, the reality on the ground is starkly different. Gwadar has yet to shed the image of an underused outpost, caught between bold ambition and logistical paralysis.

When Pakistan and China unveiled Gwadar Port in 2002, it was branded the jewel of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the multi-billion-dollar flagship of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative. With Chinese loans and engineering muscle, Gwadar was meant to give Beijing direct access to the Arabian Sea while offering Islamabad a new gateway to prosperity.

The port’s location seemed irresistible: closer to the Middle East’s energy hubs, poised to connect landlocked Central Asia with global markets, and free of the congestion that plagues Karachi’s busy docks. Commentators called it a “game changer,” imagining Gwadar as a future Dubai or Singapore of South Asia.

Yet the ships never came in any meaningful number. Today, Gwadar still handles only a trickle of cargo, dwarfed by Karachi Port and Port Qasim. The cranes are there, but the containers are not.

Economists say the flaw is not the sea, but the land. Ports thrive when they are plugged into bustling markets—the “hinterland” that generates and consumes cargo.

“Gwadar by itself should have economic feasibility,” said Kaiser Bengali, doctorate in economics. “But it is not economically feasible. Its hinterland is a thousand kilometers away in Peshawar or beyond, and twelve hundred kilometers from Lahore. Karachi is much closer to these markets, so everyone uses Karachi.”

That distance translates directly into cost. A government experiment moving goods from Gwadar back to Karachi cost an extra 2 billion rupees ($7 million). “Because of such inefficiencies, no one uses Gwadar,” Bengali concluded.

If the economics were so shaky, why build it? Bengali points to defense. When India’s navy threatened Karachi during the 2001 military standoff, Pakistan’s generals worried about blockades. Gwadar, further west, offered an insurance policy. China, too, liked the idea of a western outpost, a hedge in case of conflict in East Asia.

Missing links and rising costs

Even if strategic logic explains Gwadar’s birth, it does not explain why Pakistan has failed to turn it into a commercial hub. For Ikramul Haq, the answer is infrastructure—or rather, the lack of it.

“The problem was that the upward train system was not being built, and neither was the road network,” he said. “Now its cost has gone up to $7 billion, because it has to be connected to Peshawar and then Central Asia. That was the whole corridor idea.”

Gwadar’s port basin and terminals were built with Chinese money. But the support ecosystem—railways, highways, water pipelines, power plants, and industrial clusters—never materialized. Cargo that arrives in Gwadar still ends up moving to Karachi for distribution.

Haq believes the fix lies in industries. “If a big manufacturing concern is set up near the port from where goods are exported and imported, then it will be utilized. In Gwadar, nothing like this was done from the beginning.”

For Beijing, Gwadar is less about today’s shipping volumes and more about tomorrow’s options. “China thinks that this is a strategic location,” said Dr. Manzoor Hussain Memon of Karachi University’s Applied Economics Research Centre. 

“They think they can use it tomorrow.”

That “tomorrow” is open-ended. For now, Gwadar has yet to emerge as the reliable logistics node Chinese companies once hinted at. Instead, Beijing has invested more heavily in Pakistan’s power sector and roads elsewhere.

Structural hurdles

Beyond economics and strategy, Gwadar faces crippling practical deficits. Chief among them is water.

“Without water, no major city or industry can survive,” said Bengali. “The glossy pictures of high-rises showing Gwadar as ‘the next New York’ are just images, not reality.”

The arid Makran coast offers little fresh water, forcing costly desalination plants and tanker convoys. Without a stable supply, the idea of Gwadar as a bustling industrial city remains a fantasy.

Add to that Balochistan’s simmering separatist insurgency, which has targeted Chinese engineers and convoys. “Separatist elements in Balochistan also create difficulties. This is a permanent issue,” Haq noted.

Pakistan’s own governance record has not helped. Gwadar’s master plan has been revised three times. Bureaucratic red tape, political volatility, and patchy security have left foreign investors wary.

“There is no development going on and there are no boats there. The situation is very bad,” said Memon. “They have been doing their small work from Gwadar, so it is operational, but performance is not as it should be.”

In 2015, Pakistan’s leaders unveiled CPEC projects with fanfare, promising new jobs, power plants, and highways anchored by Gwadar. For locals, the dream was twofold: better livelihoods and greater integration into national development.

Instead, many residents complain of displacement without compensation, lack of access to electricity and clean water, and few job opportunities. To them, Gwadar remains a project designed for outsiders.

“The leadership lacked the capacity to realize it,” Haq said bluntly. “Initially, Gwadar was called a game changer, but the master plan was never executed properly.”

Can Gwadar turn around?

Despite the litany of criticisms, experts still see a path forward—if Pakistan can muster the will.

“If projects are completed properly, they can be maintained and run successfully,” Haq argued. “The location of Gwadar is strategic and viable, but due to lack of leadership, planning, and capacity, Pakistan has failed to make the most of it.”

Bengali, while skeptical of Gwadar’s natural economics, concedes that defense logic ensures it will not be abandoned. “It was not built for trade logic, but for strategic logic,” he said. “So long as that remains relevant, Gwadar will remain on the map.”

The challenge is whether Pakistan can add commerce to the calculus. That means completing road and rail corridors, ensuring water security, and building industries that make Gwadar more than a naval fallback.

On this World Maritime Day, as ports across the globe mark their centrality to trade and connectivity, Gwadar stands as both a cautionary tale and a lingering hope.

It is a reminder that ports are not just harbors; they are ecosystems that demand planning, infrastructure, and trust. Build only the cranes without the hinterland, and you get empty docks. Build without local buy-in, and you get resentment.

Gwadar remains Pakistan’s port of dreams, but dreams alone do not fill cargo holds. Whether it matures into a maritime jewel or remains an expensive strategic insurance policy will depend on choices yet to be made—not by maps, but by men.