A CRITICAL MINERALS POLICY FOR PAKISTAN: REFRAMING CRITICALITY FOR A SUPPLIER ECONOMY

Abstract

Pakistan has entered the global critical minerals economy as a prospective supplier, marked by the September 2025 agreement between the Pakistani and US firms, and the first export shipment of antimony, copper concentrate and rare earths in October 2025. Yet the country has no formally adopted critical minerals policy and no domestic definition of mineral criticality. This short review paper makes the case for such a policy and proposes its design. It offers three contributions. First, it summarises the criticality paradigm used by the United States Geological Survey and the European Union, in which a mineral is judged critical from the joint axes of supply risk and economic importance. Second, it argues that this consumer-side logic must be inverted for a supplier economy, and proposes a two-tier Pakistan Critical and Strategic Minerals List separating strategic-export minerals from domestically-critical minerals. Third, it argues that designation must be coupled to professional resource disclosure, so that minerals are marketed and financed on the basis of reserves reported to a recognised code rather than on speculative in-ground valuations. The paper maps Pakistan's endowment against the United States and European lists and proposes a phased pathway that links the policy to the National Minerals Harmonisation Framework and to the professional reporting framework on which credible disclosure depends.