By Ayesha Mudassar ISLAMABAD, May 30 (INP-WealthPK): Pakistan’s marble industry has enormous potential to increase the country's revenues and contribute to overall GDP growth provided efforts are made to apply modern quarrying techniques and attract both local and foreign investment in the sector. Pakistan has vast reserves of marble and granite throughout the country, but they have largely remained untapped due to a lack of modern technology and machinery, reports WealthPK. According to experts, non-mechanised marble extraction is wasting around 70% of the product, and the government should allow duty-free machinery imports to help the sector develop value-added products and promote exports. They believe that investors should be given the legal right to quarries and the government should provide financial assistance to marble exporters for participation in global trade fairs. According to the statistics of TrendEconomy, an international trade database, Pakistan’s marble exports have been dropping over the last five years. Exports of the commodity accounted for just 0.076% of total exports in 2020.

Commodity	Trade flow	2013	2014	2015	2017	2018	2019	2020
Marble, travertine, and other	Exports	40.18	-22.36	-9.97	-29.65	-6.69	-3.57	-32.74

Value Growth, YoY (%) However, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) provides an opportunity to the country to efficiently utilise its valuable marble reserves by establishing industrial parks. These industrial parks will introduce cost-effective cutting and finishing technology to Pakistan, thus enhancing the industry's competitiveness. The global marble market in 2017 was evaluated at $51.20 billion and is projected to reach $65.80 billion by 2026 at a compound annual growth rate of 3.6%. The worldwide marble industry is likely to be driven by rising construction infrastructure. Countries such as the US, Italy, Spain and Turkey have huge and high-quality quarries of marble and meet the global marble demand for residential, industrial and commercial infrastructure. A lack of quality manufacturing, inconsistency in raw material supply, and a scarcity of current technology are all major factors hindering Pakistan’s marble industry expansion. Though a few local enterprises are involved in mineral extraction, much more can be done to promote this sector, which has huge potential to create jobs for thousands of people due to the subsequent industries that will emerge with the uptick in marble production.