How to Build a Mineral Exploration Proposal That Actually Gets Funded in Pakistan

By Sufyan · 2026-08-25 · 5 min read

Last month I sat across from a mine owner in Skardu who'd been trying to raise 40 million PKR for a chromite project for two years. Two years. His proposal was 6 pages of text, one hand-drawn map, and a budget that didn't add up.

I've seen this maybe 200 times now.

The deposit was probably real. The geology made sense. But no investor was going to write a cheque based on that document, and honestly, I wouldn't have either. So let me walk through what a fundable exploration proposal actually looks like in Pakistan in 2025 — because the game has shifted, and satellite data is now the difference between a yes and a polite no.

What investors in Pakistan are actually reading

Here's the thing nobody tells first-time mine owners: the person reading your proposal isn't a geologist. They're a finance guy at a family office in Karachi, or a Chinese JV partner's analyst, or someone at the Balochistan Minerals Investment Facilitation Authority. They want three things upfront — how much money, how much return, and how much risk.

Everything else is supporting evidence.

I got this wrong at first with my own mines in Gilgit Baltistan. I wrote 47 pages on lithology and structural geology for a marble project and buried the IRR on page 31. The investor never got there.

A proposal that gets funded in Pakistan usually runs 18 to 25 pages. Not 6. Not 80. And it follows a rough shape:

  1. Executive summary (1 page, and this page decides everything)
  2. Location, license status, and legal cleanliness (2 pages)
  3. Geological setting and target mineral (3-4 pages)
  4. Satellite and remote sensing evidence (4-5 pages — this is new, and this is where most proposals now win or lose)
  5. Proposed exploration program with phases (3 pages)
  6. Budget with clear line items (2 pages)
  7. Team and track record (2 pages)
  8. Risk register and mitigation (1-2 pages)
  9. Financial projections and exit scenarios (2 pages)

That's the skeleton. Now the meat.

Why satellite data changed the funding conversation

Up until maybe 2020, an exploration proposal in Pakistan was mostly a story. "My grandfather found copper float in this nullah in 1978." "The GSP surveyed this block in 1993." "Local hunters say there's a green rock face on the north ridge."

Investors accepted this because there was no alternative. Now there is.

When we run a Breeze Geo mineral analysis on a license block — Sentinel-2 for alteration mapping, ASTER for hydroxyl and iron oxide anomalies, SRTM DEM for structural lineaments, SAR for surface roughness — we produce something an investor can actually verify. It's not opinion. It's pixels with coordinates. The Reko Diq team at Barrick has been using this stack for years. So has FWO on their copper blocks. Small operators just didn't have access until platforms like GeoMines made it affordable.

And this is what shifts the funding math. An investor putting 50 million PKR into a phase-1 exploration used to price in maybe 80% chance the target is nothing. With pre-drilling satellite validation showing clear alteration halos and structural controls, that risk drops. Sometimes to 40-50%. Which means you can raise more, on better terms, faster.

So in section 4 of your proposal — the satellite evidence section — you need actual maps. Not screenshots from Google Earth. I'm talking:

Most mine owners can't produce this themselves. That's fine. Either work with a geo mining consultant who can, or use a platform that generates the report. What matters is the maps are in the proposal, properly labelled, with a methodology paragraph an investor's technical advisor can pick apart and still agree with.

The budget section where 90% of proposals die

Look, I've read proposals asking for 200 million PKR with no breakdown of how it's spent. That's not a proposal, that's a wish.

A fundable budget for a phase-1 exploration in Pakistan (say, a 10 sq km chromite or copper block in Balochistan or KPK) looks roughly like this:

Break it into phases with go/no-go decision points. Investors love this because it caps their downside. Phase 1 spends 6 million, and if satellite targets don't confirm on the ground, you stop. Phase 2 unlocks the drilling. Phase 3 goes to bankable feasibility.

One thing I'd add — and this is from watching deals close and deals collapse — put the community and security line item in bold and be honest about it. A KPK proposal that pretends the local jirga doesn't need to be consulted is a proposal that will get funded and then fail. Investors who've been burned in Pakistan before now specifically look for this line.

A quick word on templates

People ask me for an exploration proposal template constantly. We have one at GeoMines we share with clients — it's built around the structure above, with placeholder sections for the satellite maps we generate. But honestly, a template is 20% of the work. The other 80% is having real geological evidence, a clean license, and a team that's done this before.

If you're missing any of those three, no template will save the proposal.

What would you actually put in the risk register for a project in, say, Chagai or Waziristan? That's the section I see people fudge the most, and it's the one seasoned investors read first. Maybe that's the next thing worth writing about.

© 2026 GeoMine AI. All rights reserved.