Get Real on Minerals

India's mining sector is going nowhere; overseas ventures, job creation must get precedence

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Early a decade after sweeping reforms were undertaken in the area of non-hydrocarbon minerals to boost investments, domestic production, and value addition, the progress appears to be unsatisfactory. The share of gross value added (GVA) in metallic and non-metallic minerals in the country's gross domestic product (GDP) had seen a decline from 0.53% in FY16 to 0.45% in FY20. In the five financial years through FY25, the overall GVA grew by an average annual rate of 5.5%, but the "mining and quarrying" segment registered a dismal average of 1.5%. Worse, the mining GVA growth has been declining steadily in recent years: it slid from 6.3% in FY22 to 2.8% in FY25 (second advance estimates). This was despite a reasonable rise in coal production during the period, implying that the non-coal segment as a whole has continued to be in the doldrums.