India has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Bolivia for development and industrial use of lithium—a prime component used in batteries for electric vehicles.
A statement, issued during the recent Bolivia visit of India’s President Ram Nath Kovind, said: “Both the countries agreed to forge mutually beneficial partnership to facilitate Bolivian supplies of lithium carbonate to India and foster joint ventures for lithium battery/cell production plants in India.”
As per the US Geological Survey, salt flats in the highlands of the Salar de Uyuni alone contain nine million tonnes of lithium—over a quarter of the world’s known deposits.
This partnership will make Bolivia one of the major providers of lithium for India’s e-mobility and e-storage needs.
The two countries have also agreed to facilitate mechanisms for the commercialization of lithium carbonate and potassium chloride produced in Bolivia by Yacimientos de Litio Bolivianos Corporación (YLB – Corporación), the statement added.
Further, India has proposed a follow-up visit to Bolivia by a delegation from National Mission on Transformative Mobility and Battery Storage of India for taking forward the cooperation in the area of battery storage solutions.
The two countries agreed that the recent visit of a delegation from Khanij Bidesh India Limited, a joint venture of three mining public sector units, under the Ministry of Mines of India, to lithium mining areas and other facilities in the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia would help create concrete collaboration in this area particularly given India’s objective to have at least 30% of its vehicles run on electric batteries by 2030.
Significantly, as India looks to set up large lithium-ion battery plants, the Lithium Triangle countries in South America (comprising Chile, Argentina and Bolivia) have offered to meet India’s growing demand for lithium.
KABIL is a consortium of three public sector companies including National Aluminum Company (NALCO), Hindustan Copper Ltd (HCL) and Mineral Exploration Corp Ltd (MECL). It has been formed by the Ministry of Mines, Government of India, to identify, explore, acquire, develop and process strategic minerals overseas.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
2 comments
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.