ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Wednesday said it was seeking Chinese investment to develop its vast but underexploited mineral resources, pitching a strategy focused on value addition, processing and export-oriented industrial clusters as it looks to turn mining into a pillar of long-term economic growth.
At the Pakistan–China Mineral Cooperation Forum in Islamabad, senior ministers said the government’s priority was to move beyond the export of raw minerals by developing processing plants, smelters and mineral-based industrial clusters linked to Special Economic Zones (SEZs), according to reports in state-run Radio Pakistan and the Associated Press of Pakistan (APP).
Pakistan holds significant reserves of copper, gold, coal and other critical minerals, but its mining sector has historically been constrained by limited infrastructure, regulatory complexity and a lack of downstream processing capacity. The government has identified mining as a potential source of foreign exchange and industrial development as it seeks international investment amid broader economic reforms.
The flagship of that strategy is the Reko Diq copper-and-gold project in Balochistan, one of the world’s largest undeveloped copper deposits, which officials see as a test case for attracting large-scale foreign capital and integrating Pakistan into global mineral supply chains.
