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ISLAMABAD: Commercial activities at the Gwadar deep seaport will start from mid-April as the authorities have acquired possession of 2,231 acres of land from Pakistan Navy and Pakistan Coast Guard for establishing free-trade zones.
“Our target is to make the port fully operational by mid-April and by that time the first commercial ship will dock at the port and a new ship lane will be operational thereafter,” the managing director of the Gwadar Port Authority (GPA), Dostain Khan Jamaldini, told The Express Tribune in an interview.
He said infrastructure development at the port was in final stages while work was in full swing to establish free-trade zones, where a large number of national and international companies have started establishing display and business centres. “We have recently acquired possession of the required land from coast guards and naval authorities for the port,” he said.
Jamaldini said Chinese authorities were almost done with their planning exercise and have shared their master plan with the port authorities.
According to the initial plan, exhibition and expo-centres will be established at the free-trade zones to display national and international products. The companies showcasing their products at these centres would be bound to use the Gwadar port to export their products.
“These free-trade zones will be exempt from customs duty, sales tax and income tax to encourage businessmen and industrialists,” said Jamaldini. He said a large number of national and international companies have evinced interest in establishing their business centres at the free-trade zones.
After the completion of the northern portion of the M-8 by June, shipping containers would not come to Karachi from Gwadar but would directly go to northern parts of the country via Uttal, Khuzdar and Sukkur, he added. “Construction of this route will save 400-kilometre distance as currently shipping containers have to go from Gwadar via Uttal, Karachi, Hyderabad and then to Sukkur.”
He said recently, an agreement was also signed between the GPA and mayor of Chinese city Zhuhai and later on another MoU would be signed between the GPA and Zhuhai port authorities to use each other’s ports for commercial purposes initially for 10 years.
Besides using the ports, Zhuhai port authorities would also train the Gwadar port staff, he said.
Last year, only 2.99 million metric tons of business was undertaken through the Gwadar port as compared to 64.57 million metric tons from Karachi port and 41.44 million metric tons from Port Qasim.
Federal Secretary Planning and Development Hasan Nawaz Tarrar recently said that the government wanted to immediately boost commercial activities at the Gwadar port by utilising the existing infrastructure to exploit the port’s potential.
“Planning is under way to boost commercial activities at the port,” he had said, while giving a briefing to the Senate Defence Committee.
New avenues: Gwadar port to be operational by mid-April – The Express Tribune
