Testimony before the National Assembly subcommittee on commerce revealed that Pakistan was losing vast sums because of the smuggling of gemstones, with a sector which had once exported $1.4 billion in a year, now down to $8 million. The loss of $5 billion in exports does not rightly portray the cumulative national loss, for what is smuggled is raw gemstones, which means that the entire industry of cutting and polishing those stones has been lost. That means there are a huge number of jobs which have been lost. This does not factor in what kind of exports and jobs have been lost if these gemstones became the basis for a jewellery industry. While gemstones have long been known to be found in the north of the country, from the foothills of the Himalayas and upwards, the main obstacle has been the lack of a sufficient quantity of metal for their settings. The presence of large quantities of precious metals at Reko Diq in Balochistan open new prospects. Even though Barrick Gold and other investors have sewn up the project tightly, they should not care whether they sell precious metal ingots locally or export them.
It should be noted that Pakistan alone does not lose, for some of the gemstones originate in Afghanistan, and merey pass through Pakistan. That means that the loss is not to Pakistan alone, but to a neighbouring country. The stones mainly go to Thailand, which has a thriving industry on this basis. Some of the stones go to India, where a Pakistan-origin ruby was sold for $1.8 million. While India’s jewellery industry is not based on Pakistani stones, it does use some, and has exports of $45 billion, and employs five million people.
Instead of learning from that example, sloth and neglect are the official attitude towards this sector. The Gemstone and Jewelry Authority, set up in 2006, along with five centres, never became operational. The government has set up a new Gemstone and Jewelry Facilitation Wing, but the results so far seem abysmal. The prospect of exporting precious chemicals seems unlikely with this attitude. For example, antimony, plentiful in Pakistan, sells for Rs 1.5 million per ton, nut there is no arrangement for its production or export. Considering how the country has treated gemstones, which were long known to be present, it is unlikely that it will be particularly with the newly emerging area of industrial minerals.
