Reporting snapshot · 14 November 2026 (Asia/Karachi). The agreement count and the $1.3 billion figure come from remarks by the managing director of Oil and Gas Development Company at the forum, and the ministry has not published a consolidated list of what was signed, so the total may change as the documents are filed. The main limitation is that every agreement described so far is a framework without a published financial term, a work programme or a completion date.
Pakistan signed 13 agreements and memoranda of understanding with international mining companies and foreign geological agencies at the Pakistan Minerals Investment Forum in Islamabad, and lenders including the US Export-Import Bank expressed interest in providing $1.3 billion in financing for mining projects. Profit by Pakistan Today reported the count and the financing interest on Saturday from remarks by Oil and Gas Development Company managing director Ahmed Hayat, who said the two were separate: the financing was an expression of interest, while the agreements themselves set out frameworks for exploration, geological work and future project development.
It is a published tally of what the two-day forum produced, and it is wider than the single agreement KhabarWire reported on 13 November as the forum closed — a memorandum between Ivanhoe Atlantic and Mari Energies signed on 12 November. The two figures are not necessarily in conflict, because the earlier count covered a commercial agreement between a foreign company and a Pakistani partner while Saturday’s tally also includes memoranda with state agencies and with foreign geological surveys. The difference still matters: signatures are what is now on the record, and committed money is not.
The agreements, by counterparty
Most of the list is exploration rather than production. Mari Minerals, the Balochistan-focused exploration firm, signed three separate arrangements covering the Chagai district: a strategic framework with Türkiye’s Lidya Mining, a joint venture framework with MTA International Company for copper, gold and associated deposits, and a further framework with Ivanhoe Atlantic, Profit reported. The Frontier Works Organisation separately signed a memorandum with Ivanhoe Mines covering exploration and mining projects in Chagai.
The Pakistan Mineral Development Corporation signed with MTA International to work on antimony, copper, gold, silver and molybdenum in Pishin, and with the UK-based International Geosciences Services to assess gemstone resources to Joint Ore Reserves Committee reporting standards and to build a model mine that could be copied elsewhere. Mari Minerals and MSALABS Limited, a subsidiary of Capital Limited, also formed a joint venture, incorporated as Mari MSA Labs, to run a commercial mineral assay laboratory in Pakistan.
Two of Globacore Minerals’ agreements cover survey technology rather than ore: airborne geophysical surveys with Shift Geophysics and Southern Geosciences, and ambient noise tomography with Fleet Space ANT. The Geological Survey of Pakistan took four arrangements of its own: a statement of intent with Japan, a tripartite memorandum with Türkiye’s General Directorate of Mineral Research and Exploration together with MTA International, an agreement with Germany’s Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources, and one with the British Geological Survey, which also marked the completion of a UK-supported capacity-building programme.
The $1.3 billion, and what it is not
The money and the papers came apart in Hayat’s own account. He said major international banks had indicated a willingness to finance mining projects, with the potential discussed at the forum reaching $1.3 billion, and that this interest was separate from the documents signed. The scale is easier to judge against the government’s own arithmetic. On the opening day, Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb said a single mining project was expected to generate $2.8 billion in export proceeds once commercially operational, and that Reko Diq had secured the largest syndicated financing in Pakistan’s history with its financiers still committed, The Express Tribune reported. So the new interest is worth less than half of what one large project is expected to earn in exports, and it is an intention rather than a facility.
Hayat attributed the interest to improvements in Pakistan’s regulatory and legal environment, particularly stability in licensing policy, and said Barrick Mining’s global chairman and senior management had attended the forum and remained committed to accelerating Reko Diq, with a project development strategy being prepared. Barrick’s chairman John Thornton told the prime minister in Islamabad that the company wanted to help build mineral processing at home, Radio Pakistan reported.
What a signature does not settle
No agreement described so far carries a published financial term, a work programme or a completion date, and the ministry has not released a consolidated list. The pledge to stop exporting minerals in raw form, renewed by the prime minister on the forum’s final day, still has no date attached, and the country’s flagship mining project remains paused: assurances from Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa about security led to Reko Diq’s development being suspended until June next year, The Express Tribune reported. The same forum heard the prime minister say production there is expected to begin in 2028, The Express Tribune reported. That suspension follows the attack on a mineral convoy near Saindak that KhabarWire documented in May.
Some of the incentives on offer are concrete. Punjab’s chief minister offered investors concessional loans, cheaper land on lease and customs duty waivers on mineral-related imports, The Express Tribune reported, and said the province’s mineral revenue had risen fourfold to Rs40 billion, The Express Tribune reported. The government has also promised Ivanhoe Mines full facilitation through the Special Investment Facilitation Council, Radio Pakistan said on 14 November.
The next test is administrative rather than ceremonial. With no consolidated list published, the terms will surface piecemeal through company announcements and licence records, and exploration frameworks become projects only if licences are granted, work programmes are agreed and the security situation in Chagai and Pishin holds. KhabarWire set out what the forum was meant to deliver before it opened, and the Pakistan Minerals and Mining hub tracks the rest of the argument.
