New Delhi, Nov 12 — India has signed 15 critical minerals-related agreements since January 2025, making the country one of the world's most active participants in the race to secure resources needed for the global energy transition, a new report has said.
The report from Climate Action Live showed that India surpassed China, Canada, Saudi Arabia and the European Union, which each signed 11 such agreements.
Only the United States, with 41 agreements, signed more critical minerals-related partnerships than India during the period, it showed.
India’s agreements reveal a growing recognition that its clean energy ambitions hinge on securing access to unavailable or domestically insufficient resources such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite, copper and rare earth elements, essential for electric vehicles, batteries, wind turbines, electricity grids and semiconductors.
India's National Critical Mineral Mission, approved in January 2025, aims to strengthen the entire critical minerals value chain from exploration and mining to processing, recycling and recovery.
The programme, running from FY25 through FY31, envisages government expenditure of Rs 16,300 crore and to catalyse Rs 18,000 crore of investment by public sector undertakings.
These include 1,200 domestic exploration projects led by the Geological Survey of India, with plans to secure 26 foreign mining assets through PSUs and 24 through the private sector.
“International partnerships are an important part of this strategy. State-owned Khanij Bidesh India Ltd (KABIL) has signed an agreement with Argentina's CAMYEN to explore and develop five lithium brine blocks covering 15,703 hectares in the province of Catamarca. India has also entered into an arrangement with Australia to explore opportunities for joint investment in lithium and cobalt assets,” the report said.
India has also recently expanded cooperation with Germany and Norway on critical minerals, supply chain diversification, research, processing and recycling to develop the capacity to process minerals, manufacture higher-value products and set up a stronger domestic industrial ecosystem.