China has head start tapping $3 trillion Afghan minerals
Reuters reports Afghanistan has grand plans for a vast rail network to attract mining investors, but experts say the project would simply be a new target for insurgents and warn that sovereign risk and high production costs are also deterring companies.
With an impoverished economy ravaged by more than three decades of war and corruption and now bank rolled by foreign aid, Afghanistan's government has pinned its hopes of rebuilding on untapped mineral resources of mainly iron ore and copper, which it has said could be worth up to $3 trillion.
