Most resource-rich country?

Pakistan's celebrated nuclear scientist Dr Samar Mubarakmand has said that Pakistan is one of the most resource-rich countries in the world in terms of its vast mineral wealth, including gold and copper reserves valued at 373 billion dollars and 185 billion tons of coal reserves. It can become a rich country in just 10 to 20 years by exploring and utilising these resources.
Pakistan can produce 50,000 megawatts of electricity and 100 million barrels of diesel by converting coal into diesel. Incidentally, China has developed expertise in gasification technology which allows direct conversion of coal into gas, thereby side-stepping the need for first extracting the coal which is a lengthy and arduous phase method involving huge financial investment. Pakistan needs thousands of chemical analysts, engineers and other experts for exploitation of its huge mineral wealth at a commercial scale.
Dr Mubarakmand's estimate that Pakistan can become a rich country in just 10 to 20 years by utilising these resources is too sanguine an estimate of a scientist, not well-versed with the ways of bureaucracy and other stakeholders. Corruption costs the economy billions of rupees every year, at a time when resource generation is not keeping pace with resource haemorrhage, with the stakeholders' main focus being on acquiring more and more foreign loans despite stiff conditionalities. Defence and debt servicing eat up a major part of the budget, leaving pretty little for health, education, research etc.
There is a need to enforce a truly multi-tiered democratic dispensation marked by proper checks and balances. The government's plan to raise education budget by 5 percent of the GDP by 2015 is a move in the right direction, provided it is implemented in letter and spirit. The government needs to effect a healthy balance in resource allocation to all sectors of the economy, to achieve harmonious economic development. Secondly, it must put the energy sector on an even keel under a policy initiative, as energy is the main driving force behind economic growth. The devastation wrought by the super flood has prompted a downward revision of GDP growth, which has been fixed at around 2.5 percent. This is all the more reason to develop a knowledge-based economy, which alone can meet our national requirements.