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Pakistan has been blessed with rich mineral resources in the form of metallic, non-metallic and fuel minerals, promising good potential for sustainable development.
However, because of the administrative and financial factors, potential mineral deposits still await a well-conceived strategy for their exploitation and proper ultilization, and the mining sector's contribution to the economy continues to be poor.
Inhibiting factors:
The inhibiting factors include: non-availability of adequate capital, lack of infrastructure, interference by bureaucrats and tribal chiefs, violation of mining rules, primitive methods and lack of mechanized mining. The exploitation of mineral deposits need to be prioritised to give a new lease of life to the mining sector.
Fresh steps are needed to change the existing situation which should include import of duty-free modern machinery, training of mining manpower, effective resistance against pressure on investors from bureaucracy and tribal chiefs, and provision of infrastructure facilities like water, power, rail, road, telecommunication in the mineral deposit areas.
Joint ventures: Joint ventures in coal and copper have shown signs of moving forward steadily. This initiative of the government would not only have healthy impact on the use of indigenous coal and copper, but also bring in, precious foreign exchange.
Pakistan is going ahead with replacing the imported furnace oil with indigenous coal available in abundance at Thar (Sindh) for power generation. Two coal-fired power plants with 300 megawatts each are under installation by a Chinese Shenhua Energy Group at Thar for the same purpose.
Besides power generation, indigenous coal with Chinese assistance is also in the process of being used in industry, such as cement production. Use of indigenous coal has reduced the cost of cement production by Rs350 per ton. Another investment of Rs1,000 million is in offing to convert more cement plants to coal.
Apart from foreign and inland investment in coal and cement production. copper has become equally attractive for foreign investors. A US investment of $20 million is there to enhance copper-gold production at Saindak.
The Metallurgical Construction Co (MCC) of China and the SML (Pakistan) are also engaged in exploring 412 million tons of copper-gold deposit in that area.At present, the annual target of production of blister copper at Saindak has been estimated at 15,810 metric tons.
This tonnage contains 1.47 tons of gold and 2.76 tons of silver. An increase of about 40 per cent in copper-gold production with Chinese investment of $20 million is also expected.
Australian investment: Saindak project's success has attracted direct foreign investment in copper-gold deposit of about one billion tons at Reko Diq (Chagai district) believed to be even bigger than Sarcheshmeh (Iran) and Escondida (Chile) where an Australian firm M/S Tethyan Copper Company Ltd (TCCL) is engaged in making it a big resource base.
The exploration involves foreign investment of over $1 billion. Initially the TCCL, has decided to invest about $10 million in the project. The investment includes mine construction and plant installation to produce annually around 40,000 tons of pure copper based on latest solvent extraction technology. Another investment of $130 million for the construction of the project will also be arranged by TCCL.
