As the world feels disruption in smooth supplies of critical minerals with China curbing its exports, India has said it needs to ensured that anyone’s dominance in critical minerals is not used as a weapon against others.
“We need to work together to make supply chains for critical minerals and technology secure and reliable. It’s important to ensure that no country uses these resources for its own selfish gain or as a weapon against others,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at the Brics Summit in Rio de Janeiro .
In BRICS Session on Strengthening Multilateralism, Economic-Financial Matters, and Artificial Intelligence, Modi said global standards must be created that can verify the authenticity of digital content, so that we can identify the source of the content and maintain transparency and prevent misuse.
“For improved cooperation between all countries, we shall be organising the “AI Impact Summit” next year in India. We hope for your active participation to make this summit a great success,” he added.
The Brics Summit Declaration stated that the members affirm the need to promote reliable, responsible, diversified, resilient, fair, sustainable, and just supply chains of such minerals.
It also talked of guarantee on benefit sharing, value addition and economic diversification in resource-rich countries, while fully preserving sovereign rights over their mineral resources, as well as their right to adopt, maintain and enforce measures necessary to pursue legitimate public policy objectives.
China controls 70% of Rare Earth Elements (REE) production and 90% of processing. After the tariff war with the US, China has imposed restrictions on exports on these minerals by making it mandatory for exports to seek government nod before shipping those minerals out.
The shortage of rare earth magnets for the US industry brought about a limited truce on tariffs between China and the US. Indian manufacturers have also seen disruption in supplies of the minerals and both countries are in talks to resolve the issue.