Ports log record vessel calls amid Middle East shipping disruption
Dawn reports that keeping the diverted traffic depends on port reforms and road links, not on the disruption that produced it.
Pakistan's ports have recorded a record number of vessel calls as disruption in the Middle East diverted regional shipping, Dawn reported, with the newspaper saying that holding a lasting position as a transshipment hub depends on reforms and road links.
Dawn tied the record to the regional disruption rather than to any change in Pakistani port policy, and named two conditions for keeping the traffic: reforms, and road connections between the ports and the markets behind them.
The report did not state, in the headline and opening it published, how many vessel calls were recorded, over what period, or at which ports.
Pakistan's sea trade moves through Karachi Port and Port Qasim in Sindh and Gwadar in Balochistan. All three are run by federal bodies. Vessel calls are the basic count of how much shipping a port is handling, alongside the tonnage of cargo loaded and discharged.
Cargo from those berths reaches Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa over the motorway and national highway network. Gilgit-Baltistan is supplied along the Karakoram Highway, the same road that carries trade north to the Khunjerab Pass and on to China.
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