A crisis threatens to reroute trade. can Pakistan reroute its future as well?

The Middle East rarely creates opportunities for others. This time, it has. As conflict disrupts established shipping routes and supply chains across the Gulf, trade will not stop — it will shift. Food flows, in particular, have been rerouted with urgency. In recent weeks, Pakistan has accelerated exports of key food items to Gulf markets, while Karachi’s ports have handled a surge in transshipment traffic — in one instance processing over 8,000 units in under a month, roughly equivalent to an entire year’s previous volumes, according to some reports. For a country accustomed to being peripheral to global trade, this is not a small development. It is a signal. The immediate explanation is straightforward. Gulf economies import up to 80–85% of their food requirements (according to FAO), making them acutely vulnerable to supply disruptions. When traditional routes are strained, proximity matters. Pakistan sits close, has some agricultural surplus, and — crucially — has port capacity that is not fully utilised. Karachi Port is operating at roughly 50–55% capacity, Port Qasim at around 60–65%, while Gwadar remains below 10% utilisation. In other words, crisis supplied the demand. But temporary rerouting is not the same as structural transformation. The temptation now will be to declare this a turning point — to suggest that Pakistan can position itself as a regional trading hub, much as Dubai did in the 1980s. That comparison is instructive, but not for the reason it is often used. Dubai did not become a hub because it had a port. Many countries have ports. Dubai became a hub because it reduced friction — relentlessly and systematically. Jebel Ali was not just infrastructure; it was an ecosystem. Today, it hosts over 10,000 companies (JAFZA official data), built on predictable customs, integrated logistics, and regulatory stability. Pakistan, by contrast, still treats trade as a process to be controlled rather than enabled. Logistics costs in Pakistan exceed 20% of the value of traded goods, compared to roughly 8–10% in more efficient trading economies (National Trade Corridor; World Bank benchmarks). Clearance procedures remain inconsistent. Policy direction — particularly around tariffs and export incentives — is prone to abrupt shifts. Even where physical capacity exists, institutional capacity lags behind. The result is a system where goods can move, but not always efficiently, and rarely predictably. This is why the recent surge matters — not as proof of success, but as proof of possibility. For a brief moment, external conditions have reduced the penalty for Pakistan’s inefficiencies. Cargo has come anyway. Ships have docked anyway. Trade has flowed despite the system, not because of it. The question is whether policymakers understand what they are seeing. If this moment is treated as validation — as evidence that Pakistan is already on the path to becoming a hub — it will pass like many others. Traffic will revert. Old bottlenecks will reassert themselves. The episode will be remembered as a blip driven by geopolitics. But if it is treated as a stress test, the implications are more interesting. It suggests that Pakistan does not need to build entirely new infrastructure to compete. It needs to make existing infrastructure usable at scale. That means faster and more predictable customs processes, stable trade policy, functioning bonded warehousing, and a regulatory environment that allows firms to plan beyond the next notification. In short, it means shifting from a mindset of control to one of facilitation. Dubai’s advantage was never just geography. It was trust — built over time, reinforced by consistency, and embedded in institutions. That is harder to replicate than a port. But it is also what separates a transit point from a trading hub. Pakistan has, unexpectedly, been given a glimpse of what higher trade throughput could look like. Not in theory, but in practice. The risk now is misreading the moment. A surge in traffic is not a strategy. It is an opportunity to build one. The article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Business Recorder or its owners

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