Warehousing and Storage Infrastructure at Gwadar Remains Critically Deficient

For a landlocked country whose transit cargo would need to be staged, stored, and cleared before moving overland through Afghanistan toward Dushanbe, functional warehousing is not optional.

It is the physical requirement on which every other logistical arrangement depends. Experts assessing CPEC infrastructure have described Gwadar's warehousing and storage capacity as critically deficient, and the port's basic facilities, including reliable water supply and electricity, are not consistently available.

No Water, No Power, No Reliability

Gwadar's water shortage is chronic. The port city and its industrial zone have operated for years on a water supply that cannot meet the demands of a functioning commercial port, let alone the expanded activity a Central Asian transit corridor would generate. Power supply is similarly inconsistent, with industrial operations in the Gwadar Free Zone regularly affected by outages.

Cold chain storage, which any transit corridor handling food, pharmaceuticals, or temperature-sensitive manufactured goods requires, is not viable where the power supply is unreliable. Tajikistan's transit cargo, sitting in storage at a port with no guarantee of refrigeration or even consistent lighting, is a supply chain liability, not an asset.

The Gwadar Free Zone's Unfulfilled Promise

The Gwadar Free Zone was positioned under CPEC as the commercial engine that would transform the port into a regional hub. Industrial relocation to the zone has remained limited.

High production costs and restrictions on foreign workers have deterred the manufacturing and logistics companies whose presence would generate the warehouse demand and cargo volumes a transit hub needs.

A free zone that has not attracted industry does not have the warehousing ecosystem that Tajikistan's transit trade requires. The physical infrastructure and the commercial activity that gives it purpose are both absent.

What Deficient Warehousing Means in Practice

For Tajikistan, deficient warehousing at Gwadar is not an inconvenience to be managed. It is a direct cost and risk. Cargo that cannot be properly stored faces spoilage, theft, and damage.

Delays in storage and clearance compound transit times, erasing whatever distance advantage the Gwadar route might theoretically offer. Freight forwarders' pricing Tajikistan's transit options will factor warehousing reliability into their cost models. A corridor where cargo sits in inadequate storage for unpredictable durations will price itself out of competition with a corridor where it does not.

Chahbahar's Warehousing Is Operational and Being Institutionally Deepened

Shahid Beheshti Terminal at Chahbahar, developed under India's investment through India Ports Global Limited, has upgraded warehousing and storage capacity that is already handling cargo. Iran's broader port infrastructure supports cold chain and general warehousing along established Central Asian transit routes.

The Ashgabat Agreement framework provides the legal basis for storage and transit across Iranian territory toward Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and beyond. Iran and Tajikistan have now signed a Cooperation Implementation Program for cargo transit through Chahbahar and a railway transit MoU, formally moving the corridor from deliberation to operationalisation.

Gwadar's proposal to warehouse Tajikistan's transit cargo requires substantial prior investment in basic infrastructure before it can be taken seriously as an offer. That investment has not been made.

About the author: Commodore (Dr.) Johnson Odakkal is a maritime scholar, strategic affairs analyst, and a former Indian Naval Wargame and Strategic Planner and Research Analyst. He is a specialist in Global Politics and Theory of Knowledge and an Adjunct Faculty member of the Maritime and Strategic Studies at the Naval War College, Goa. He can be reached at [email protected]