India, U.S. exploring combined engagement with third countries to source minerals: Piyush Goyal

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

With China dominating the critical minerals’ trade, India and the United States of America are exploring a combined engagement with third countries to source the minerals or requisite funds or technology to tap such resources, Union Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said early Friday in Washington.

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

Mr. Goyal, speaking at an interaction with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said that critical minerals figured in his official parleys with U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo on Thursday.

“This was also a part of our discussions that ultimately, the U.S. and India will also have to look at third country engagements. We believe it could be an engagement where third countries could become a source of capital, a source of technology, or a source of critical minerals, or could become markets,” Minister Goyal said.

“So I think the U.S.-India partnership will have a newer dimension going forward, where we significantly ramp up our work with each other but we are also, in the future, going to see what we can do together for the wider good of humanity and what we could do for other parts of the world. Either we benefit from them, or we support them in their journey,” he remarked.

Stressing that Africa and Latin America hold a good potential for tapping critical minerals, the minister said: “Chile, for example, has good lithium reserves which could be taken up for processing. Both the U.S. and your universities and many innovation company startups in India are working on making technology for batteries and storage systems. Mr. Modi had a tech-round table that MIT had hosted just two weeks ago in New York, where a lot of these subjects were discussed, and I think that we are at a right time in history, coming closer together to be able to help each other, and to be able to work with other parts of the world.”