Islamabad is very keen to present Gwadar as the gateway for trade to and from the Central Asian states.<\/p>\n
However, it seems that in the years ahead, the Gwadar port, once it materialises and becomes an outlets for Central Asia, will have to face stiff competition from the Iranian port at Chabahar.<\/p>\n
These port projects could deepen the Pakkistani-Iranian rivalry, thereby hindering the stabilisation of the region.<\/p>\n
Conversely, they could serve as avenues for cooperation.<\/p>\n
China is funding threequarters of the project, supplying $198m in a mixture of loans and grants, and Islamabad the remaining $50m. Pakistan intends to take on other Gulf ports, especially Oman’s Salalah and UAE’s Jebel Ali and offer Central Asian states their most efficient access to both the west and the east.<\/p>\n
Gwadar will be the shortest route for the Central Asian states and their proposed east and westbound exports of oil, gas and goods if the plan succeeds.<\/p>\n
The location of Gwadar, on the Arabian Sea coast in south-western Baluchistan, is strategically significant as it is just on the opposite end of the Gulf of Oman and the straits of Hormuz. Pakistan’s National Highway Authority (NHA) and the Frontier Works Organization (FWO) are tasked to build a 700km coastal super-highway, which will link Gwadar with the rest of Pakistan.<\/p>\n
The highway will also link to Afghanistan from where a road network currently under construction will take goods to Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and deeper into Central Asia.<\/p>\n
The project might have to face competition from the Iranian port at Chabahar which is also currently under construction. Iran, with assistance form India, plans to channel trade from Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan destined for the East and the Gulf via Chabahar. Iran sees Chabahar port as an instrument in their policy to escape international isolation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
According to governmentissued projections, the Pakistan-China joint venture to build a $248m deep-sea port at Gwadar will be completed by March 2005.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-7250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7250\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7250"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=7250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}