SAINDAK, March 23: By exploiting reserves in Balochistan, Pakistan will be one of the major copper producers within five or six years, Federal Petroleum and Natural Resources Minister Usman Aminuddin said on Friday on the occasion of handing over of Saindak Copper-Gold Project to a Chinese firm.

He said the government was paying special attention to development of Balochistan.

Welcoming the Metallurgical Construction Company (MCC) of China, he said Pakistan was pleased to see the company working at the project after a break of six years. The government would extend its full support to the company, he said.

He said the project would start producing copper by the end of 2002 with an annual production of 20,000 tons and within five years the production, including all mineral producing sites in the province, would reach 250,000 tons.

The MCC President Mao said: “We started the project for the first time in 1992 which continued till 1995. Now we are restarting the project from today and we expect that it will go in production by December 2002.”

Project Manager Syed Khalid Hassan briefed the minister about the project.

He said, according to an international survey, Saindak copper was of excellent quality. The project will yield an average production of 15,810 tons of copper, 1.47 tons of gold and 2.76 tons of silver for 19 years and generate an annual revenue of about $65 million. It will create 1,288 direct and 11,000 indirect job opportunities.

He said the Saindak Metals Limited (SML) was established in 1974 and the first project assigned to SML by the federal government was Saindak Copper-Gold Project, which was approved on in 1989 by Executive Committee of National Economic Council (Ecnec).

A contract between the SML and the MCC for implementation of project was signed in Beijing in 1990 and it became effective in 1991.

He said the project started trial production in November 1995, which continued until January 1996 and in 45 days it produced 1,545 tons of blister copper and 10,000 tons of semi-finished products, which were sold in the international market at Rs280 million.

However, the work could not be carried on after January 1996 due to lack of funds. So far, Rs14 billion have been spent on the project, he added.

Later, the minister visited the mining site, concentrator, smelter and 50MV power plant.—APP