By Shahnoor Saqib | SCN NEWS
ISLAMABAD, Aug. 26, 2026 — Pakistan's latest estimate that more than $7 trillion in mineral wealth lies beneath its soil presents the country as one of the world's potentially significant emerging mining frontiers, but the more revealing measure of its prospects may be found in a decision already taken by one of the industry's biggest international investors. Barrick Mining continues to describe the giant Reko Diq copper-gold project as a valuable long-term asset, yet the Canadian miner has slowed development and extended a comprehensive review until mid-2027 as it reassesses security, financing, capital requirements, project scope and timing. Taken together, the government's enormous valuation and Barrick's caution expose the central question confronting Pakistan's mining campaign: not whether the country possesses valuable geology, but whether it can create conditions in which global miners are prepared to commit billions of dollars for decades.
Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal supplied unusually direct evidence of that problem this week. While putting Pakistan's estimated mineral endowment above $7 trillion during a discussion with the Asia Society Policy Institute, he acknowledged that large mining developments demand heavy upfront investment and long gestation periods and said decades of regional conflict and domestic political instability had deterred the long-term capital such projects require. That qualification matters more to prospective investors than the headline valuation itself. Mineral endowment is not the same as economically recoverable reserves, and neither automatically becomes revenue: deposits must be explored, quantified, permitted, financed, connected to infrastructure, secured and operated competitively before their theoretical underground value can be converted into commercial production.
Reko Diq makes that distinction impossible to ignore. Barrick announced on April 2 that worsening security conditions in Pakistan and the region required it to slow development activity while continuing its review until mid-2027, although the project remains under active management and the company continues to believe in its long-term value. The review covers precisely the variables international investors will examine elsewhere in Pakistan: the evolving security environment, capital requirements, financing, project scope and timeline. Reko Diq is therefore simultaneously Pakistan's strongest advertisement for its geological potential and a warning that world-class geology cannot insulate a project from above-ground risk.
That tension makes Canada's renewed engagement with Pakistan's mining sector particularly significant. The relationship moved beyond general expressions of commercial interest on July 20 when Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand visited Islamabad, the first visit by a Canadian foreign minister in almost two decades. Canada and Pakistan formally identified mining and critical minerals as priority sectors, recognized Pakistan's mineral potential alongside Canada's expertise in responsible mining, and agreed to promote investment and trade across exploration, services and the wider mining value chain. Anand also invited Pakistan's deputy prime minister and foreign minister to attend the 2027 Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada convention, creating a direct route for Islamabad to take its investment proposition into one of the world's most influential mining gatherings.
Canada's own actions demonstrate how demanding that investment environment has become. At PDAC 2026, Ottawa announced more than C$3.6 billion in programmes and investments intended to move Canadian critical minerals from mine to market, while Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson separately announced more than C$165 million for 22 projects focused on planning, development and processing. Canada subsequently launched a Critical Minerals Accelerator aimed at catalysing private investment and getting strategic projects built faster. The comparison is instructive for Pakistan: even a mature mining jurisdiction with operating mines, established capital markets and extensive infrastructure is using public policy and financing to remove obstacles between geological resources and commercial production.
Pakistan's challenge is considerably more complex because security and political continuity sit alongside the usual questions of infrastructure and project economics. Mining capital is unusually sensitive to those conditions because investors can spend years and enormous sums before earning their first dollar from production. A manufacturer can sometimes relocate machinery or change suppliers when conditions deteriorate; a mining company cannot move the ore body. Once capital is committed underground and to associated roads, power, processing and transport infrastructure, the investor is effectively making a long-term bet not only on geology but on the country's ability to maintain predictable operating conditions.
That helps explain why Islamabad's current attempt to broaden its mineral partnerships is strategically important. Iqbal has placed critical minerals inside a wider geoeconomic strategy and says Pakistan is courting American companies and potential U.S. financing while maintaining its established relationship with China. Canada introduces another route: a major mining jurisdiction with direct commercial exposure to Pakistan through Barrick and an official bilateral commitment to responsible-mining cooperation. Rather than forcing Pakistan into a single critical-minerals bloc, those relationships could allow Islamabad to attract capital and expertise from competing economic centres — provided projects remain commercially credible enough for investors to participate.
The Canadian relationship also raises the standard Pakistan will be expected to meet. Canada's current mining policy explicitly links project development with environmental assessment, Indigenous participation, infrastructure, transparent ownership and responsible investment. In July, for example, Ottawa approved a major milestone for Ontario's Crawford Nickel Project only after an impact-assessment process incorporating scientific evidence, Indigenous knowledge, consultation and public input. Those requirements do not provide a template Pakistan can simply copy, but they illustrate how increasingly sophisticated mining investors evaluate environmental and community risks alongside the quality of the mineral resource.
For mineral-rich Balochistan, that dimension is inseparable from security. Communities surrounding major projects will judge mining development through employment, infrastructure, water, local services and their share in economic benefits, while companies will judge whether community relationships and government policy can support operations over decades. Canada's high commissioner had already pointed to Reko Diq's schools, hospitals and water-purification initiatives during bilateral mining discussions in January, indicating that community outcomes are becoming part of how Canadian officials themselves describe the project's value.
Pakistan therefore arrives at an important point in its mining campaign with two narratives running simultaneously. The first is the extraordinary opportunity represented by the government's $7 trillion estimate and increasing international competition for critical-mineral supply chains. The second is the much less comfortable evidence supplied by the country's flagship Canadian-operated project: geological potential can attract global capital, but security, financing and long-term predictability determine how quickly that capital is actually deployed.
Between now and PDAC 2027, Islamabad has an opportunity to narrow the distance between those narratives. The strongest presentation Pakistan could take to Toronto would not be another larger estimate of what its rocks might eventually be worth. It would be evidence that exploration is advancing, projects can obtain financing, infrastructure is being planned, communities have a meaningful economic stake and international miners can commit capital without repeatedly recalculating the risks surrounding it. For an industry accustomed to looking beneath the surface, Pakistan's biggest mining test is increasingly what investors see above it.