The country is abundant with tapped and untapped natural resources of worth trillions of dollars in natural gas, coals, minerals, precious stones, gold, marble and granite, copper and gold but they not being explored adequately due to mismanagement. Though Pakistan is rich in natural resources, as; the world's fifth largest copper-cum-gold reservoirs are found in Pakistan, its poor management and political instability have led it to the economic dependency. Pakistan was ranked 123rd out of 139 countries surveyed by Global Competitive Index. This pathetic condition has been caused by, along with political instability and mismanagement, worsened law and order situation and corruption. Despite that, all is not lost, with investigation and mobilization of natural resources Pakistan can be reinvigorated. It is direly needed that leadership of Pakistan show some courage and make their policies pragmatic and effective to change the situation, otherwise natural resources of Pakistan will be of no use.
Amongst the natural resources of Pakistan, water has great importance due to its manifold utilities, on one hand it provides hydropower energy to produce electricity, on other hand it meets the demands of agriculture. Despite having best irrigation system of the world, Pakistan has failed to utilize this resource at best level. Out of seventy seven million acres cultivable area, only 55.5 million acre has been ploughed. Pakistan can meet all its electricity demands by producing hydro electricity but all has been politicized owing to the miss-re-presentation and vested interests of politicians. Pakistan has potential to produce 40,000 MW from water alone, as proved by recent study, but only 33 percent of whole generation is produced from this resource. This way Pakistan not only has wasted potential, now available capacity is being lost as well. Storage capacity of water reservoirs is quickly depleting because of annual sediment inflow.
