Fact-check: No, Hamid Mir did not claim Pakistan exported $6,000bn worth of copper to China

Online posts claim journalist Hamid Mir has revealed that Pakistan has sent $6,000 billion worth of copper from its North Waziristan region to China. Users further ask what became of the money Pakistan earned from the export.

The claim is false. No such disclosure has been made by the journalist.

Claim

A user on Facebook shared a graphic which read: “Hamid Mir has revealed that copper worth $6,000 billion has been sent from North Waziristan to China. While Pakistan's debt is only $200 billion. Where did the money go?”

This post had been viewed over one million times, shared over 25,000 times, and liked over 16,000 times at the time of writing.

The graphic was shared by other users on Facebook and X (formerly known as Twitter).

Fact

The journalist has made no such disclosure on his talk show or social media accounts.

“This is a fake post,” Mir told Geo Fact Check, over the phone.

Additionally, Geo Fact Check reviewed episodes of Mir’s show "Capital Talk" on Geo News to verify any such claims by him.

On July 26, 2023, the journalist spoke to an engineer from the state-run construction firm, the Frontier Works Organisation (FWO), regarding copper deposits in North Waziristan.

The engineer informed the television host that the estimated worth of minerals in across Pakistan was around $6-8 trillion.

When Mir asked the FWO official how much the country could earn from the Muhammad Khel copper mines in North Waziristan, the official replied that Pakistan had exported 22,000 tons of copper to China in the last three and a half years, generating $30-35 million in revenue.

Nowhere in the over 35-minute show did the journalist claim that Pakistan sent $6,000 billion worth of copper from its North Waziristan region to China.

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