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The industry has called on the government to encourage private sector mining of rare earth minerals to reduce the country’s reliance on China to import critical minerals.
The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has presented a detailed memorandum with suggestions in this regard for the upcoming Union Budget.
“Private mining will diversify sources of supply for these strategic raw materials and reduce India’s reliance on China for imports of critical rare earth minerals,” CII observed.
“In 2018-19, for example, 92 percent of rare earth imports by value and 97 percent by volume came from China. There is clearly a need to build domestic capacity and wide sources of supply for such an important and strategic raw material,” CII said, making a proposal to tap the potential of the country’s own rare earth reserves.
According to the memorandum, the Center should set up a ‘Rare Earth Mission in India’, manned by professionals, on the lines of the Indian Semiconductor Mission.
Further, the government should make their research a critical component of the government’s Deep Ocean mission plan.
The industry group also discussed making rare earth minerals part of the “Make In India” campaign, on the lines of the “Made in China 2025” initiative.
The Chinese government has launched “Made in China 2025”, a state industrial policy that seeks to make China dominant in global high-tech manufacturing, with a focus on the use of rare earth minerals.
Rare earth minerals
Rare earth elements (REE) are a group of 17 elements, including 15 lanthanides plus scandium and yttrium.
They are moderately abundant in the earth’s crust, but not concentrated enough to be economically exploitable.
These are small but essential components of more than 200 products in a wide range of applications, especially high-tech consumer products such as mobile phones, computer hard drives, electric and hybrid vehicles, and flat-panel monitors and televisions.
For example, magnets made of rare earths are many times more powerful than conventional ones.
Together with critical energy elements (ECEs), such as lithium which has become a ubiquitous battery material, REEs have emerged as strategic elements necessary for a sustainable energy system.
A number of rare earth minerals contain thorium and uranium in varying amounts, but they are not essential components of the mineral composition.
Although India has 6 percent of the world’s reserves of rare earths, it produces only 1 percent of global production and meets most of its needs for such minerals from China.
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