India, US ink pact on critical minerals: Commerce Minister Goyal

Union Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal has announced that India and the US have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on critical minerals that will pave the way for cooperation between the Indian Ministry of Mines with its US counterpart to secure the supply chains in these materials that are critical to the production of clean energy technologies and equipment.

The MoU will also pave the way for the two countries to launch joint projects in a third country and seek investments from other countries, the Commerce Minister said at a news conference to review his meetings with US officials.

The MoU was signed on Thursday at the sixth India-US commercial dialogue that was hosted by the US and chaired by Commerce Minister Goyal and his US counterpart Gina Raimondo.

"We executed the MOU on critical minerals to keep the supply chains open and for greater engagement between the Ministry of Mines in India and the US government," the Commerce Minister told reporters at the news conference.

These critical minerals include lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese, graphite, rare earth elements, and copper, which are critical to the production of clean energy technologies.

India is the only developing economy in an elite group of countries called the Minerals Security Partnership (MSP) that includes the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Norway, Sweden and the European Union, which recently launched a financial vehicle to rally and mobilize public and private sector for funding in this sector.

The MSP was launched in June 2022 with the unstated goal of securing this supply chain of these minerals from China. India joined the group exactly a year later during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s state visit in June 2023.

The MoU opens yet another area of bilateral cooperation between the two countries that have already an exhaustive list of corporations, ranging from climate to emerging technologies, trade, strategic, education, health and space.

The Commerce Minister also met with US Trade Representative Katherine Tai for the Trade Policy Forum meeting, and he co-chaired the India-US CEO Forum with Raimondo on Wednesday.

"All these institutions are now regularly interacting with each other," Commerce Minister Goyal told reporters. "There was a time that these were sporadic interactions. Many years would go by without any meetings. Now they are very outcome-oriented, with a focused agenda, and the periodicity has been made very regular."

He recounted recent visits by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, and External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar. He misspoke, however, about Ajit Doval, the National Security Advisor, saying he came with the Prime Minister. He did not. Commerce Minister Goyal corrected himself at prompting by Vinay Kwatra, Ambassador to the US, that it was the US NSA Jake Sullivan, who visited India.

The Commerce Minister was ebullient about his interactions with US businesses during this visit. "I think every visit that I come here, the interactions with investors is truly phenomenal. Have met with some of the top bankers, (and) top investment funds, who are large investors in India. Some were very ambitious."

"Going forward, each one of them has only reconfirmed to me, (that) they are interested (to) invest in India," he said, adding that the numbers that they are talking of in the next few years are "truly astounding".