GWADAR: China has announced to make multi-million dollar Gwadar Port ‘fully operational’ by the year 2017.
China Overseas Ports Holding Company Ltd Chairman and CEO Zhang Baozhong, while speaking at a day-long conference in Gwadar city, said that the port cranes are almost ready, and the port will be fully functional by the next year.
Gwadar Port will see roughly one million tonnes of cargo going through it by 2017, Zhang said, adding, “We’re expecting at least one million tons of material will go in and out next year.”
The projected traffic represents a 100 percent increase over this year’s throughput, but is a far cry from the 300-400 million tons per year that the Gwadar Port Authority envisions for the facility, which has ambitions of becoming a regional hub.
Gwadar, in Balochistan province, forms what officials call the ‘heart’ of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a grand $46 billion project giving Beijing greater access to the Middle East, Africa and Europe through Pakistan.
The port was built in 2007 with technical help from Beijing as well as Chinese financial assistance of about $248 million. The Chinese company took over Gwadar’s operations in 2013. The revamped port has three multipurpose berths and its inner is dredged to 11.5 metres.
