Pakistan has decided to hand over the operation of the Gwadar port in southwestern Pakistan to a Singaporean company, a cabinet minister said Friday.

According to the private GEO TV, the Port of Singapore will take the port operation of the Gwadar port, located at the Gwadar city at the entrance of the Persian Gulf on the Arabian Sea, in the third week of January and the formal inauguration ceremony of the port operation will be held on March 23.

"The prime minister today gave approval to hand over the Gwadar port operation," Minister for Shipping and Ports Babar Ghauri said.

He said that the Pakistani prime minister had constituted a 15- member board to come with the final terms of the contract and the director general of the port and shipping would head the board.

The Gwadar port, some 460 kilometers west of the southern Pakistani port city of Karachi, is a deep-sea warm water port constructed in two phases with help from China.

Gwadar has had immense geostrategic significance on many accounts.

In 1993, Pakistan started technical and financial feasibility study for the development of the Gwadar port. The Gwadar port project started on March 22, 2002.

Source: Xinhua