Pakistan sits on some of the richest, least-developed mineral ground in Asia. Balochistan alone is estimated to hold copper and gold reserves worth hundreds of billions of dollars at Reko Diq, H-4 Tanjeel, Boya-Dagan and Saindak; Thar hosts one of the world’s largest lignite coal deposits; the northern belt carries chromite, marble, and rare-earth-bearing rock that could feed everything from steel mills to electric-vehicle battery supply chains. On paper, this should be one of the most attractive frontier mining jurisdictions on earth.

Yet foreign capital has stayed away for decades, and continues to stay away now, despite the government’s most serious institutional push to change that story: the Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC), created in 2023 to fast-track investment in mining, agriculture, and energy by cutting through Pakistan’s bureaucratic maze. The SIFC has secured headlines and revived the long-stalled Reko Diq project with Barrick Gold. But beneath the headline deals, the everyday mechanics of Pakistan’s mining sector remain hostile to serious, long-horizon investors. The reasons are structural, not rhetorical, and sit below what a coordinating council can fix through goodwill alone.

The first and most corrosive problem is who actually holds Pakistan’s exploration and mining leases. Under the devolved regulatory framework that followed the 18th Constitutional Amendment, provincial mines and minerals departments issue reconnaissance, prospecting, and mining leases. In practice, many of these leases have gone not to geological survey firms, mining engineers, or capitalised exploration companies, but to politically connected individuals, local contractors, and intermediaries with no technical background in mining........

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