IPEF Members Discuss Critical Minerals for Supply Chain Cooperation

New Delhi, Oct 24 (PTI) The 14 members of IPEF bloc, including India and the US, have started a critical mineral dialogue to work on areas like regulations and technological gaps in the sector to enhance cooperation, an official said on Thursday.

This dialogue is working parallelly with an action plan team on critical minerals, which is set up under the supply chain council.

The move would help reduce India's dependence on these minerals on China.

The Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) was launched jointly by the US and other partner countries of the Indo-Pacific region on May 23 in Tokyo. The 14 IPEF partners represent 40 per cent of global GDP and 28 per cent of global goods and services trade.

The framework is structured around four pillars relating to trade, supply chains, clean economy and fair economy (issues like tax and anti-corruption).

India has joined the three pillars except the trade part. The member countries are holding negotiations to sign separate agreements on these subjects.

"Parallelly, we have started a critical mineral dialogue between the IPEF countries. It started 6-8 months back. The idea is to see that all of us come together and start looking at what is our resource map, our regulations, what needs to be done, our technological gaps, recycling technology," the official said.

At the end of this dialogue, the members will come out with recommendations.

Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Fiji, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, the US and Vietnam are members of the bloc.

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 in demand for the production of batteries for electric cars.

Australia is leading the action plan team on critical minerals with a focus on batteries as it has a lot of lithium and is a key player in this sector.

The aim is to see how critical mineral availability in the region can create a resilient supply chain for batteries.