New wine in an old bottle

US-LED PAX SILICA MAY NOT SUCCEED IN ANOTHER ATTEMPT TO BREAK CHINESE MONOPOLY

- SOMIT DASGUPTA

THE LATEST INITIATIVE in the area of critical minerals is Pax Silica (PS). It is a US-led move which also includes countries such as Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the Netherlands, the UK, Israel, the UAE, and Australia. The word "Pax" probably refers to the Greek goddess of peace and Silica is obviously a reference to silicon, which is used extensively in semiconductor chips and artificial intelligence (AI) hardware.

Not very long ago, the US had taken the lead to form the Minerals Security Partnership (MSP). Today it has about 14 countries including the European Union (EU) and India, which joined the MSP in 2023, a year after its formation. The objective of the MSP was to counter China's monopoly in critical minerals, both in mining and in processing. The composition of countries in the MSP, however, is somewhat intriguing. Take the case of India. One does not know its expected functionality in the MSP. India is not really endowed with critical minerals or rare earths beneath the earth's crust and neither does it have access to processing technology. It is said that India has reserves of about eight critical minerals, though not all of them are proven. Recently, there were reports that India has ample reserves of lithium in Jammu and Kashmir but here again, they were inferred and not proven. Mining them has also elicited a poor response due to various reasons. India, however, is a big market for critical minerals given its target to have 500 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2030, and have 30% production of electric vehicles at the margin by 2030, etc.