Since the Pakistan Minerals Summit of August 2023, and the first Minerals Investment Forum in April 2025, nearly every discussion on the country’s mineral sector has returned to Reko Diq – and rightly so. It is among the world’s largest undeveloped copper and gold deposits, and after years of litigation and renegotiation, it has shown that Pakistan can build a structure that serious international miners and lenders will back. But a sector cannot rest on a single project. As the second forum approaches in November, the government should ask a plain question: when a foreign mining company arrives in Islamabad and asks what else is available, what is placed before it?

The candid answer is that very little is offered in a form an international investor can properly assess. There is no shortage of talk about mineral wealth and unexplored terrain in Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit-Baltistan. Presentations carry maps with coloured belts and long lists of minerals, and public sector companies sign memoranda of understanding. What an investor seldom receives is a clear account of a specific mineral project: the work done on it, what that work revealed and what the government expects the investor to bring. The problem is not that no geological information exists, but that what exists has not been assembled, independently assessed and presented as an investable proposition.

Reko Diq has shown what becomes possible when a resource is properly defined and the right structure is built around it.

Reko Diq has shown what becomes possible when a resource is properly defined and the right structure is built around it.

The........

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