ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Stone Development Company (PASDEC) will rent its modern quarrying equipment and technologies. The equipment will be rented in order to extract square blocks of marble and granite and to enhance exports to $500 million by 2015.
This was recently offered by PASDEC CEO Ihsanullah Khan at a presentation on the investment opportunities in the domestic marble and granite sector. He said that two machinery pools one each at Gaddani Balochistan and Risalpur NWFP have become operational, from where different marble and granite quarrying machinery could be hired. “If mechanised stone mining proliferates then the marble and granite exports could easily boost to $500 million by 2015.”
He said that PASDEC was endeavoring mechanised quarrying practices that include diamond wire saw, chain saw machines for precision and cutting and bench quarrying. The objective is to discriminate blasting and reduces wastage of natural stones.
There are approximately 1300 natural stone mines and 2000 processing units which produce value added products.
He said that 10 model projects are in operation out of the planned 45, which are also under implementation. Two model quarries at Nall District Khuzdar Balochistan and Chitral are successfully working and marble square blocks excavation is continuing according to international standard. Besides the quarry up-gradation projects, Mastung-1 and Mastung-2 at Mastung Balochistan and Buner were producing exceedingly high quantity of natural stone.
PASDEC has sold the stock of marble square blocks extracted from Model Quarry, Nall Khuzdar and two Quarry up-gradation projects of Mastung in open market with 1200 percent value addition on attractive prices, he said adding that even foreigner investors were showing keen interest to import raw marble from Pakistan.
He said that model quarry projects at Buner and quarry upgradation at Loralai and FATA are in process. It is expected that production from these projects will begin soon.
He said that seven marble and granite industrial estates would be established out of which 2 each would be established in Balochistan and Khyber Phaktoon Khwa and one each in Sindh, Punjab and FATA.
