New Delhi: India has joined the US-led minerals security finance network, which aims to “strengthen cooperation and promote information exchange and co-financing” among participating institutions from the Indo-Pacific region and Europe, according to the US State Department.
The network will also “advance diverse, secure and sustainable supply chains for critical minerals”, the department said in the announcement made on Monday.
The development comes amid China’s efforts to control supplies of critical minerals worldwide.
“The energy transition is at risk,” Undersecretary of State Jose Fernandez said on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York City. “We need more production capacity for critical minerals that need to come online — many of these supply chains for critical minerals are concentrated in one or two countries and also lack resilience.”
The network is the latest initiative out of Minerals Security Partnership, a framework the US set up with 13 countries and the European Commission in 2022. It aims to diversify network participants’ supply chains for critical minerals.
India is trying to secure critical minerals from Argentina, Chile and Australia besides certain African states. Kazakhstan in Central Asia may also provide India with necessary critical minerals.
