NITI Aayog is working on policy recommendations, including royalty and incentive mechanisms, to encourage the extraction of critical minerals and strengthen India’s critical mineral value chain amid rising demand from clean energy and advanced technologies, Anupam Lahiri, Principal Director (Minerals) and Additional Director General at NITI Aayog, said on Wednesday.
“We are working on policy prescriptions. One aspect is what the royalty should be so that state governments are compensated, but more importantly, how incentivisation can come for the mine owner so that they can invest in extracting the critical minerals,” Lahiri said. He was speaking during the 15th India Minerals and Metals Forum with the theme related to India's minerals and metals sector and building self-reliance.
Lahiri said recycling has emerged as another key pillar of India's critical minerals strategy. He said a committee is examining the entire value chain for recovery of critical minerals from battery waste, e-waste and mining waste, and is working on identifying costs and revenue streams across the chain to design suitable incentives. The committee is expected to come out with a plan of action for implementation by the Ministry of Mines.
“The main problem we are facing is the collection space. the total value chain we require to map, from different households and institutional areas till the critical mineral is recovered. Only then we can have some policy as to what incentive or at which stage the incentive can be given,” he said.
Lahiri said India already generates a sizeable volume of battery waste and e-waste, which is expected to increase further in the coming years, and stakeholder consultations are underway to develop a practical framework for strengthening the recycling ecosystem.
He said that around 5,000 mineral blocks are under exploration or at different stages of exploration in the country, but converting mineral resources into mineable reserves takes time, making overseas acquisition of critical mineral assets another important pillar of India’s strategy. Indian public sector companies are pursuing critical mineral projects in countries like Australia and Argentina. Several resource-rich countries allow mining but restrict export of raw ore, requiring processing within their jurisdictions before export, posing a challenge for supply security.
Lahiri said the growing importance of new technologies is driving a shift in industrial demand from conventional raw materials towards critical minerals. He said India initially identified around 40 minerals that could be classified as critical before refining the list following consultations with scientific experts and industry stakeholders.
Highlighting the importance of technology, Lahiri said scaling up indigenous technologies would be essential to reduce costs and strengthen India's critical mineral ecosystem. “The only problem is the scale. Costs can come down only if technologies are scaled,” he said.
Lahiri said technologies at lower stages of development remain expensive unless they are scaled up for commercial deployment. He expressed confidence that coordinated efforts by the government, industry, research institutions and technology developers would help India meet a significant share of its future critical mineral requirements through domestic production, recycling and innovation.
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