All mining projects must go through three stages: exploration, development and production.
LAHORE: This is in response to Farooq Tirmizi's article titled "The truth about Reko Diq" (January 26). Although I agree with its overall approach, some important facts have been overlooked. All mining projects must go through three stages: exploration, development and production. Unfortunately, we never do our homework and end up getting unfavourable terms in contracts. This means our feasibility studies need to be prepared more professionally. In 1994-95, as a consultant, I tried my level best to save the Saindak Project from falling into the hands of the Chinese. Had we transferred technology and developed commercial know-how back then, we would have been able to exploit Reko Diq on our own today. In fact, the Saindak debacle should be kept in mind when formulating future strategy to exploit our mineral wealth.
An independent professional group should be involved in the evaluation and review of the project to determine the size of the resource and money spent thus far. The share of the federal and provincial governments should be in equity, not profits alone. We need to understand that we cannot run the project on our own and a joint venture would be the best approach to follow.
Transfer of technology, downstream processing and reasonable returns should be our focus till we are able to develop commercial mining expertise. The approach of doing nothing and then claiming that nothing works will only isolate us from the rest of the world and cripple our economy. From the lease of Saindak, we get Rs85 million annually. I am sure we can do better than that at Reko Diq but we are not in a position to run it on our own without increasing our public sector debt.
Dr Farid A Malik
Published in The Express Tribune, January 27th, 2011.
