A SERIES of snags have kept Gwadar from becoming the centre of thriving trade and prosperity it was meant to be. With the pullout by Port Singapore Authority from port operations uncertainty regarding its future has deepened. PSA had entered a 40-year development and management contract. It decided to leave after just five years because of the government’s failure to transfer the allocated land — currently in the possession of the navy — required to make the country’s only deep-sea port fully operational. The navy has been delaying the transfer of the land located on the mouth of the port, citing one reason or another. At one point it said the specific piece of land was needed for strategic and defence purposes and at others it has shown a willingness to sell it to the Balochistan government at its own price or in exchange for another, larger piece of land. Now the Senate’s Standing Committee on Ports and Shipping has asked the navy to resolve the issue with the province and transfer the land within three weeks because no new investor would be willing to put money in the project unless the said piece of land is handed over for the purposes of the project. The odds of this happening are not very promising, given the complications. The government says a Chinese company will take the project over from PSA, but it will take some doing on the part of everyone involved to ensure that Gwadar comes out of its long and economically expensive limbo.

A vital link in the ‘new silk route’, Pakistan’s only deep-sea port is expected to encourage industrialisation in Balochistan and create hundreds of thousands of jobs by linking “China and Central Asia to the Middle East and Indian Ocean economies”. Many observers argue that the project will continue to hang in the balance due to increasing lawlessness and the ongoing insurgency in the province even if the navy agrees to hand over the land in its possession. That is a matter for the future. The early resolution of the land issue at this stage will be one less mountain to climb.