Saudi Minister for Investment Sheikh Khalid Bin Abdul Aziz Al Faleh on Thursday confirmed that the kingdom’s Manara Minerals was set to buy a stake in Barrick Gold’s Reko Diq gold and copper mine in the coming weeks.

Barrick Gold owns a 50 per cent stake in Pakistan’s Reko Diq mine, with the remaining 50pc owned by the governments of Pakistan and the province of Balochistan.

Barrick considers the mine one of the world’s largest underdeveloped copper-gold areas.

In August, Barrick Gold’s chief executive had said that the company was open to bringing in Saudi Arabia’s wealth fund as one of its partners in Pakistan’s Reko Diq gold and copper mine.

Addressing the Pakistan Saudi Arabia Business Forum in Islamabad today, Minister Al Faleh said: “I am glad we have a newly-formed venture called Manara between PIF and Ma’aden — our national champion in mining — and they are eager to start a number of initiatives but the first one we hope to conclude in the next few weeks will be for them to enter into the Reko Diq project with state-owned enterprises of Pakistan.

“And Barrick Gold was working in Saudi Arabia and sees our partnership as an additive to the project,” he said, adding that he saw the move as “sort of a pilot project that we hope will be multiplied many times over”.

Manara Minerals Investment Company, backed by the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, plans to invest at least $1 billion in the Reko Diq project, controlled by the Canadian mining firm.

Last night, a high-powered Saudi delegation led by Al Faleh arrived in Islamabad on a three-day official visit.

“We are committed to and extremely encouraged by the announcement by his royal highness the Crown Prince committing the front end of Saudi investment to Pakistan which is 5 billion dollars,” Minister al-Faleh said, adding that this was announced during the visit of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

In April, PM Shehbaz and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had agreed to expedite the first wave of a planned $5 billion Saudi investment package for Pakistan.

It is expected that the $5bn investment would be made in the minerals sector especially the Reko Diq gold and copper mines as Saudi Arabia has already been studying the prospects of tapping into this sector, though the kingdom also has an interest in petroleum, agriculture as well as IT sectors.

Regarding Saudi Arabia Vision 2030, the minister said that the key point for about the vision was to extending their prosperity to their partners and to their friends.

“Because no single country, no matter how rich, no matter how strong financially, can compete in the global world we live in today,” he said, “You need demographics, you need large markets, you need human resources.”

Regarding information and communication technologies (ICT), the Saudi minister said, “We see ICT as a huge area where Pakistan has a nearly unlimited potential”.

“The key ingredient for ICT is human talent [and] we believe in Pakistani talent,” he added, citing the example of Pakistanis starting Aramco in the country.