Government of India releases first list of 30 critical minerals

Last week, the Government of India’s Ministry of Mines, released its highly anticipated Report of the Committee on Identification of Critical Minerals.

Drawing upon the combined American, European, and Australian experience of critical materials policies, the report noted that an ‘ideal definition’ of critical minerals in the Indian context would be the following,

These minerals are considered ‘critical’ since they are expected to play an ever-larger role in the economies of the future, particularly in high-tech electronics, telecommunications, transport, and defence applications.

Moreover, they are becoming increasingly central to the net zero trajectories that countries are likely to follow.

The government’s report specifically considers the difficulty of extraction and processing of the minerals, as well as the potential for supply chain disruption.

Committee process

To identify critical minerals of strategic importance, the ministry established a seven-member committee in November 2022.  

While preparing the list, the committee attempted to lay the groundwork for an ecosystem that could address multiple objectives including supporting economic growth, job creation and competitiveness; research, innovation, and exploration; enhancing global partnerships; securing raw material security for the country’s defence needs; and promoting climate and environmental protection.

As a result, the committee also studied establishing an end-to-end value chain which included upstream exploration, upstream mining, processing, refining and metallurgy, manufacturing and industrial applications, and material recovery and recycling.

Minerals were identified through a comprehensive three-stage process,

• Identified 69 elements that were classified as critical in major economies such as Australia, USA, Canada, Japan, and South Korea.
• Meetings were held with ministries in charge of sectors of vital importance in the areas of power generation and distribution, atomic energy, renewable energy, fertilizers, electronics, and rare earth metals. This step allowed the committee to identify minerals that were most critical in the Indian context.
• The committee then worked ‘to derive a criticality index’ in consultation with the International Energy Agency, and research experts with expertise in the European Union’s methodology which considered both ‘economic importance and supply chain risks.’

The European Commission issued its first list of critical raw minerals in 2011, and has continued to update it every 3 years, providing a sound template to think about the challenge at hand.

Within ‘Economic Importance,’ the committee analysed disruption potential, a substitutability index, GVA multiplier score, and a cross-cutting index.

 The ‘Supply Risk’ framework looked at governance issues including licensing, end-of-life recycling rates and potential for recovery, import reliance and self-sufficiency, as well as issues of substitutability.

In the final list of critical minerals, the committee thus included elements that it deemed to be of both high ‘Economic Importance,’ high ‘Supply Chain Risk’ and a part of the list created in the second step.

The report identified three high potential value chains which were Clean Technology, Information and Communication Technology (such as semiconductors), and Advanced Manufacturing.

Defence and security technologies were also included in the value chain analysis.

Using this framework and accounting for other variables such as the net import reliance and reserve position of India, the committee identified 30 critical minerals which are available in the table below:

Managing import dependency

Presently, India is dependent on partner countries for a host of critical minerals. In the future, government officials will seek to concentrate efforts on diversifying sources and building domestic capacity for some of the minerals listed below.

Agricultural considerations

A unique feature of India’s strategy is the weightage given to fertilizers minerals (eg: Rock phosphates, Potash) to ensure food security and sufficient resources for the agricultural sector which accounts for over a fifth of GDP.

In addition, India is the largest exporter of rice in the world, as well as a major exporter of wheat.

Next steps

A report in a leading English newspaper, The Print, noted,

The report adds,

Further,

The Secretary for the Ministry of Mines, Mr. Vivek Bhardwaj, noted that such a report has helped identify the most crucial areas to amplify efforts and reduce dependency on other countries.