More than a decade after the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor was announced, Gwadar “continues to be devoid of any major business or economic enterprises” (Dawn).
The number that tells the story
Of 47 registered enterprises in the Gwadar Free Zone, only three are reported to be operational, more than twelve years after the CPEC agreement was signed in July 2013:
– Agven Private Limited — fertiliser exports – Hangeng Agricultural Industrial Park — processing donkey meat for export – Hengmei Lubricants Plant — lubricant production
That is a 6 per cent activation rate on registered tenants, and the three that function are a fertiliser exporter, a lubricant plant and an abattoir.
What has been built
| Project | Cost | |—|—| | Gwadar International Airport | $320 million | | Eastbay Expressway | $168 million |
The airport, inaugurated in January 2025, is described as the largest in the country.
It remains inactive.
What has not
No major commercial or industrial enterprise. Recent port movement amounts to two cargo vessels docking in April — the MV HOM Leader and the MV Dolphin 103 — and even that was driven by the US-Iran conflict disrupting shipping through the Strait of Hormuz rather than by any commercial pull toward Gwadar itself.
Drainage remains rudimentary: “If there is torrential rain in Gwadar, the entire town is submerged in water.”
The shape of the problem
Half a billion dollars of Chinese-financed infrastructure sits at a town that has neither the enterprises to use it nor the utilities to support them.
That is not a construction failure. Everything promised was built, and built to standard. The gap is that transport infrastructure is a response to commercial demand as often as it is a cause of it — and nothing has been done to generate the demand that a container port, an expressway and the country’s largest airport were meant to serve.
An airport that has never handled meaningful traffic is not an asset awaiting activation. It is a fixed cost.
Why the two ships matter more than they look
Gwadar’s busiest recent moment came because a war 800 miles away made an alternative route briefly attractive. That is the clearest statement available of the port’s actual commercial position: it is a contingency, not a route.
Why so little has moved
Security is the constraint everyone names and few quantify. Chinese workers and installations have been targeted repeatedly by the banned Baloch Liberation Army since 2018, and Beijing’s concern for the safety of its personnel has slowed CPEC momentum across the board.
An investor deciding whether to occupy a Free Zone plot is not weighing the expressway or the airport. They are weighing whether staff can be kept safe — and 44 of 47 registered enterprises have answered that question by not starting.
The context
Balochistan’s chief minister said this week that 1,000 nomads would be relocated for a security operation in the province. The security environment that has shaped Gwadar’s development for a decade has not changed, and it is the variable no amount of concrete addresses.
