Land of Treasures, Pakistan

Providing golden opportunities for foreign investment

Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC) and FDI plays a key role in the journey of economic recovery and development. For which the SIFC foreign direct investment target is to achieve at least £48bn over the next five years. SIFC has identified more than 30 projects in priority sectors such as energy, minerals, agriculture, and ICT for potential investment partnerships.

Additionally, under the SIFC, Canadian multinational Barrick Gold Corporation is investing around £5.6bn in mining at Rekodik, Balochistan.

In this context, Prime Minister Kakar has set a target of completing foreign investment approvals within 15 days as part of his commitment to “bureaucratic red-tapism”. Pakistan has reserves of chromite, nickel, emerald, gold, copper, coal and rock salt, as well as lithium and rare earths critical for green energy technologies.

Several energy projects, including wind, hydro, and solar, equipped with advanced battery storage are underway. These aim to help increase total energy production from 31% to 62% by 2031.

Geographically, Pakistan lies at the crossroads of Central South and West Asia along the Indian Ocean coastline, providing a global gas corridor.

This key corridor will be the 1,800 km Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline that will provide the world with access to Turkmenistan’s vast gas reserves.

Similarly, construction of new liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals at Gwadar port will be implemented through TAPI which will pave the way for export of LNG to Japan and Europe.

In particular, agriculture is the focus of FDI, foreign investors can now own 100% corporate farms in Pakistan under the new rules and will also have full freedom to lease and transfer land.

Pakistan’s mineral resources and manpower are attracting investors from all over the world to invest in Pakistan.