The Mining of Precious Minerals in Pakistan

In nominal terms, Pakistan’s economy is the 47th largest economy in the world but in the terms of Purchasing Power Parity, Pakistan is on number 27th. The economy of Pakistan is semi-industrialized which mainly encompasses chemicals, textile, food processing, agriculture, mining and many other industries.

Just like the textile industry and the agricultural industry play a very important role in the economy of Pakistan, the mining and quarrying industry is also a very important industry for Pakistan. Pakistan has immense reserves of a number of minerals and natural resources which includes coal, gold, coal, copper, bauxite, mineral salt, chromite, iron ore, and many more. Pakistan also mines a variety of precious and semi-precious minerals including ruby, topaz, emerald and many more. Pakistan is country with very rich resources. The largest deposit of pure salt in the world is in the province of Punjab. Pakistan produces the purest and premium marble, granite and slate in the world. The province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, formally known as North West Frontier Province deposits approximately 78% of marble production of Pakistan.

The province of Baluchistan has very rich reserves of minerals. This area is rich with extensive reserves of gas and oil. Copper, iron, chromite, pockets of antimony and gold in the far west of Baluchistan and zinc in the south are also found in this province. For more than 50 years, since the discovery of natural gas near Sui in 1952, the province of Punjab has been developing projects to produce oil and gas. In 2006, the Reko Diq are in Baluchistan was revealed to have the major reserves of copper and gold. This area has proven to have the evaluation reserve of 2 billion tons of copper and 20 million ounce of gold. This discovery has ranked Reko Diq between one of the top seven copper reserves. This project is likely to produce 200,000 tons of copper and 400,000 ounces of gold each year. The minerals in Baluchistan haven’t been exploited to their full capacity nor have they been fully explored, though the government of Pakistan has begun to develop this region to tap into the reserves of resources that are found there. If these minerals are used wisely and if the government invests more on their exploration, these will surly help in the development of the economy of Pakistan.