KICT
The 2025-2026 Karachi Backlog: What Pakistan Shippers Should Actually Do

KICT: What the 2025-2026 Container Backlog Actually Involved

In late 2025 and into early 2026, KICT became the subject of a public dispute between its own management and Pakistan Customs over the state of its container yard. The Collectorate of Customs Appraisement West issued a written notice to the terminal’s CEO citing chronic delays in cargo delivery, warning of potential prosecution under the Customs Act over what it described as inadequate infrastructure and operational shortfalls. The All Pakistan Customs Agents Association, representing the clearing agents who deal with the terminal daily, described containers flagged for physical examination being grounded for six to nine days rather than moving through a predictable examination-and-release cycle, and said the delay was generating real financial losses through container rent and missed delivery commitments. Press reporting at points cited figures in the tens of thousands of undelivered containers, with more than 10,000 reportedly added to the pile in January 2026 alone.

KICT’s own public response rejected that framing. The terminal stated it was operating without the level of congestion being reported and that the headline container counts circulating in the press were a misstatement of the actual situation. Both positions are part of the public record, and this page isn’t the place to adjudicate which number was accurate, what matters for a shipper is what the episode reveals about risk at this specific terminal. Congestion tied to examination processing, not general terminal throughput, was the specific failure point named by clearing agents. If your cargo is the kind that regularly draws a customs examination flag, that’s the exact scenario the 2025-2026 reporting describes as vulnerable to extended delay at KICT, independent of whatever the terminal’s overall congestion level turns out to be at any given time.

KICT: What to Actually Check Before You Book

The practical takeaway isn’t “avoid KICT,” it’s “don’t assume best-case turnaround here without asking first.” Free time and demurrage don’t pause because a delay originates on the terminal’s side rather than yours; a container grounded for an extended examination cycle still burns through the same free days and starts accruing detention and demurrage on the same schedule as any other delay, which is precisely the cost the clearing agents’ association flagged as a real, incurred expense during the backlog period, not a theoretical risk. If you’re booking a time-sensitive shipment onto a service that discharges at KICT, ask your freight forwarder for a current read on examination turnaround before you commit, rather than relying on either KICT’s public statements or news coverage from a single point in time, both of which can be stale by the time your container actually lands.

Since terminal assignment follows the carrier’s service rotation and isn’t something you choose shipment by shipment, the realistic lever is upstream planning: knowing which of your regular services call KICT, building in buffer for cargo likely to be examined, and having your agent flag current conditions before the vessel arrives rather than after the container is already grounded. Maalbardaar tracks terminal-level conditions as part of pre-arrival coordination for exactly this reason, so a known risk factor like an active examination backlog gets built into the client’s timeline and transporter scheduling up front. Where a container is already delayed, our agents follow up directly with both the terminal and the Collectorate on status rather than treating the standard process as the only option, since a terminal already known to be under scrutiny from customs is also one where direct follow-up tends to move things faster than waiting in the general queue.