India and the United States firmed up a key framework for cooperation in ensuring steady supplies of critical minerals, announced the foreign ministers of the two countries on the sidelines of theQuad foreign ministers' meetingheld in Delhi on Tuesday, May 26. The pact comes amid growing concerns over China's export controls on rare earth elements and strategic metals vital for global technology supply chains. "It is something very timely and critical," External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said in the presence of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
The two foreign ministers signed the India-US bilateral framework on securing supply of mining and processing of critical minerals and rare earths.
According to the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), the framework aims to deepen India-US cooperation across the critical minerals and rare earths supply chain, including mining, processing, recycling and related investments.
It seeks to strengthen resilient and diversified supply chains while promoting collaboration in financing and the effective management of critical minerals and rare earths scrap, the ministry said.
"This framework aims to deepen our cooperation across the entire critical minerals and rare earth supply chain, including mining, processing, recycling and related investment," Jaishankar said. "It is one more sign of how close our cooperation has been in a world where there are so many challenges but also so many opportunities," he said.
In his remarks, Rubio highlighted the strategic partnership between the US and India and how important it is for the respective national interests of both countries. "It is a tangible example of that," he said, referring to the inking of the pact.
"We are two countries that have strategic interests in ensuring reliable long-term access to critical minerals and supply chains that are important for our innovation economy," he said.
Rubio also mentioned the US-backedPax Silica initiative, saying that the "groundwork was laid for this on February 4 when you joined us at the Critical Minerals Forum that we hosted in Washington DC."
The Pax Silica initiative was launched in December last year to build a secure, resilient, and innovation-driven supply chain for critical minerals and artificial intelligence (AI).
Apart from the India-US framework, the Quad grouping also decided to expand cooperation in critical minerals.
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