India, US explore joint engagement with third countries to source minerals: Piyush Goyal

Union Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal. File | Photo: PTI

As China dominates trade in critical minerals, India and the United States of America are exploring a joint engagement with third countries to obtain minerals or necessary funds or technology to extract such resources, Union Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said early Friday in Washington.

In India, the lack of ready supplies of critical minerals for the green energy transition has resulted in 100% import dependence for minerals such as lithium, cobalt and nickel. This June, Union Mines Minister G Kishan Reddy noted that 95% of India’s copper requirements are also imported. China is a key supplier of many of these products with a leading role in their processing and refining for a myriad of end uses.

Mr Goyal, speaking at a meeting with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said the critical minerals figured in his formal talks with US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo on Thursday.

“It was also part of our discussions that eventually the US and India would also have to look at third party commitments. We believe that this could be an engagement where third countries could become a source of capital, a source of technology or a source of critical minerals, or they could become markets,” Minister Goyal said.

“So I think the US-India partnership will have a new dimension going forward where we greatly enhance our work with each other, but also in the future we’ll see what we can do together for the greater good of humanity and what we can do for other parts of the world. We either benefit from them or support them in their journey,” he noted.

Stressing that Africa and Latin America have good potential for extracting critical minerals, the minister said: “Chile, for example, has good reserves of lithium that can be used for processing. Both the US and your universities and many innovation start-ups in India are working on creating battery technology and storage systems. Mr. Modi had a technical roundtable that MIT hosted just two weeks ago in New York where many of these topics were discussed, and I think we are at the right moment in history, coming together to be able to help each other each other and to be able to work with other parts of the world.”