Pakistan reopened the Gabd-Rimdan border crossing with Iran on Saturday morning, bringing a week-long suspension of cross-border trade to an end and allowing stranded trucks to move again. The crossing in Gwadar district, also known as Gate 250, resumed commercial traffic after officials began clearing consignments that had been waiting since the closure.
Mir Naveed Jan Kalmati, president of the Gwadar Chamber of Commerce and Industry, confirmed the reopening, saying trucks and other vehicles are now moving in both directions carrying import and export goods. Border officials initially cleared commercial consignments holding consignment notes dated October 16 or earlier.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
The crossing had been shut since October 17, when the Ministry of Commerce suspended trade at both Gabd-Rimdan and Taftan, withdrawing an October 3 trade order with immediate effect and giving no reason for the halt. The Balochistan government later described the closure as temporary, aimed at addressing security concerns and curbing smuggling, while Iran’s foreign ministry attributed the disruption to technical issues.
The shutdown came at a heavy cost. Hundreds of trucks, including LPG tankers, were left stranded on both sides of the frontier, and on Thursday unidentified gunmen attacked parked freight vehicles near the closed Gabd-Rimdan crossing, setting dozens of trucks ablaze. Local administrators reviewed the security situation before allowing trade to restart, and additional forces have been deployed to protect trade convoys.
The reopening matters far beyond the border district. Pakistan imports around 7,000 metric tons of LPG from Iran every day, with more than 4,000 tons coming through Gabd-Rimdan alone, according to the Pakistan LPG Association. Within days of the closure, the price of a 12-kilogram cylinder had climbed from Rs4,500 to Rs7,000, reaching as high as Rs8,200 in Skardu, while more than 1,000 containers carrying potatoes, bananas and rice for Iran were stuck at the crossings. With winter approaching and household demand for LPG rising, traders say restored supplies should help ease the shortage and take pressure off energy and food prices.
The crossing reopened days after Field Marshal Asim Munir visited Tehran for talks with the Iranian leadership on bilateral relations and regional issues. Pakistan and Iran share a 909-kilometre border, running between Balochistan and Iran’s Sistan and Baluchestan province, and bilateral trade totalled around $2.8 billion in the 2023-24 fiscal year.
For traders and transporters who spent a week watching their cargo sit idle, the reopening is an immediate relief, but the episode has exposed how quickly a single crossing’s closure can ripple into kitchens across the country. Whether prices actually come down now depends on how steadily consignments keep moving in the days ahead, and whether Taftan, the other crossing shut on October 17, returns to normal operations just as quickly. Until that flow is sustained, the relief at Gabd-Rimdan will feel like a first step rather than a full recovery.
