India, still hot from winning a successful bid to develop the 1.8-billion ton Hajigak iron-ore reserves in Afghanistan in November, is poised yet again to make a business proposition, this time, to develop the country's Aynak copper deposits.

A consortium of Indian metal companies led by National Aluminium Company (Nalco), India's largest aluminium producer, and Hindustan Copper Limited (HCL), the country's sole integrated copper producer, will bid for the development of the Aynak copper reserves that is located in Logar province, 30 km south-east of Kabul.

The Afghan government, seeing the mad scramble for its natural resources by emerging economies, particularly China and India, decided to hasten the process of developing new mining blocks in the country. Invitations to six new mining tenders, including three blocks of Aynak copper reserves, two in gold, and one in lithium, are currently being worked on. These are set to be issued February/March 2012.

"We are trying to get all details of copper deposits in Afghanistan and will surely participate once expressions of interests are floated. We have the skills in mining copper and Nalco has the cash," Shakeel Ahmed, HCL chairperson, said, adding they are open to accept other mining firms into the consortium.

Both Nalco and HCL are majority controlled by the Indian government and are under administrative management of the Mines Ministry.

"Depending on needs of specific competencies and funding requirements, other companies could be part of the proposed consortium at a later date," he said.

The Afghan government, eager to rebuild its nation as well as attract investment, had been proclaiming it holds an estimated $3 trillion in natural resources. The deposits, which yield copper and iron ore, oil and gas, niobium, cobalt, gold, molybdenum, silver and lithium, could lift the country's coffers by some $3.5 billion a year.

The Metallurgical Corporation of China (MCC) won the extraction rights into the Aynak mine in 2007, which could yield over 11 million tonnes of copper, according to Soviet-era data and a newer study by the United States Geological Survey. MCC is scheduled to start production in 2014.

The Hajigak deposit in Central Afghanistan, whose development was awarded to an Indian consortium led by state-owned Steel Authority of India, is so far the highest foreign direct investment in Afghanistan. Its total project cost is estimated at $11-billion.

The predicted combined payout from the Aynak and Hajigak mines could earn the Afghan coffers at least half a billion dollars a year, but not until 2016.

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