Pakistan is a great country with tremendous resources regarding minerals, fertile, water resources, land, good industries, strong manpower, flourishing weather and all those blessings which any developed country can have but false policies and poorly managed plans let it down to the borderline of third world country.
Thar coal reserves have 175 billion tons of coal, which is equivalent to 618 billion barrels of crude oil. This is more than twice if we compare it with oil reserves of KSA and equal to total oil reserves of top four countries Canada, Iran, Iraq and Kuwait.
If like KSA, we utilise about 10 million of it per day, it would suffice for more than 200 years. Pakistan has enough coastal area where we can plant wind mills from where we get energy which is enough sufficient to overcome our energy crises even we can export to Afghanistan.
Other than that we have the largest gold/copper ore deposits in Balochistan dying to be exploited. Deposits of copper and gold valued at 1.2 trillion dollars. Reko Diq is a place in Pakistan which is rich in gold and copper.
Below the sands lie 12.3 million tons of copper and 20.9 million ounces of gold. Only foreign companies are investing. Now Tethyan is planning to invest $3.2 billion and Chile is planning to invest $4 billion.
Due to lack of government policies, we don’t have our own company who can invest to get copper and gold and we can’t get the market price. About 75 percent of Pakistan’s population depends upon agriculture sector. About 25 percent of Pakistan’s total land area is under cultivation and is watered by one of the largest irrigation systems in the world and employs 41 percent of the labour force but unfortunately we don’t have enough wheat to feed 187 million people. Pakistan is exporting wheat in a large quantity which results in shortage of wheat in Pakistan and high prices of wheat. Only 4-5 percent of America’s population depends upon agriculture sector and they keep such a balance that after providing wheat to their country they export the remaining one.
Pakistan is highly dependent on agriculture, which in turn is dependent on water. Of the79.6 million hectares of land that makeup Pakistan, 20 million are available for agricultural. Of those 20 million hectares, 16 million are dependent on irrigation.
It is estimated that up to 90% of Pakistan’s agriculture is dependent on irrigation. An even more important fact is that many of Pakistan’s industries are agro-based, such as the textiles industry. For this problem to be solved, dams should be utilised.
With the assistance of United Nations and supervision of World Bank, Kalabagh dam was designed by 1984 but due to politics played by our government and politicians, Kalabagh could not be build.
MAWRA HASSAN KHAN
Lahore
good artical
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