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Mines Secretary V L Kantha Rao has said that the mines ministry is working on rolling out the Critical Mineral Mission this year. He noted that Union Budget 2024-25 has proposed launching Critical Mineral Mission for domestic production, recycling of critical minerals, and overseas acquisition of critical mineral assets. He said its mandate will include technology development, skilled workforce, extended producer responsibility framework, and a suitable financing mechanism.

The secretary said critical minerals, such as cobalt, copper, lithium, nickel and rare earths, play a crucial role in the production of clean energy technologies, from wind turbines to electric cars. Such minerals are particularly in demand for production of batteries for electric cars. He said 'the government has successfully auctioned 14 critical mineral mines. So the mining practises in the critical mineral mines will have to be studied because this is the first time that these kinds of mines will become operational in the country. We will have to study how these mines are operationalised in other countries and what are the specific practises relating to critical mineral mines and we may have to incorporate some of those into the star rating system.’

He said ‘during the Union Budget, it was announced that the government will do the first auction of offshore mineral blocks this year, and we are working on that as well.’ Minerals such as lithium, copper, cobalt and rare earth elements are critical for sectors like nuclear energy, renewable energy, space, defence, telecommunications, and high-tech electronics. He also said during budget, the government proposed to fully exempt customs duties on 25 critical minerals and reduce BCD (basic customs duty) on two of them. This will provide a major fillip to the processing and refining of such minerals and help secure their availability for these strategic and important sectors.