ISLAMABAD, Nov 4: Pakistan entered the metal market for the first time in its history on Tuesday with the export of 1,000 tons of blister copper, produced from the Saindak Copper-Gold Project in Balochistan.

A senior government official told Dawn that the Saindak project started commercial production on Aug 6 this year and in the first two months produced 1000 tons of blister copper which had now been exported.

This is for the first time that Pakistan had exported any metallic product on commercial basis and the first shipment of blister copper also contained silver and gold, he said.

He said the Saindak production would export around 16,000 tons of blister copper within a year and the Balochistan government would get two per cent royalty from the total production to be valued at London Metals Exchange (LME). As such, the total export earnings out of Saindak copper would be around $45 million per annum.

The official said that the Metallurgical Corporation of China (MCC) had also signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Pakistan during President Gen Musharraf’s current visit to China to invest another $30 million to expand the Saindak project by 30 per cent. With this, Saindak’s annual production would cross 20,000 tons.

He said the MCC had also agreed to give royalty to Balochistan on gold and silver in addition to the overall copper production.

He said the company had also signed another agreement with the government to bring in another investment of $70 million to develop lead and zinc project in Duddar district of Balochistan.

He said Balochistan area would become a hub of copper trade in the next few years with the launch of H-4 starter project of Australian company Mincor and Tethyan Copper.

Saindak Copper-Gold Project was launched in the early 70’s and reached trial production in 1996. The project, however, had to be stopped due to shortage of running capital. It was handed over to the MCC on a long-term contract basis and the project reached commercial production stage in August this year.