“Lithium, so that it is well understood, does not even belong to the government or the state, lithium belongs to the people and the Mexican nation,” he added without giving more details about the new company, the AFP news agency reported.
The president had already announced that he intended to monopolize the exploitation of the mineral when he presented in October a constitutional reform initiative on the subject.
López Obrador sent Congress a reform on the electricity industry that seeks to qualify lithium as “a strategic area of the State” and thus ensure that the public sector is the only one to exploit this strategic metal.
According to data from the Ministry of Economy, there are 36 lithium projects in Mexico, all of them financed with foreign capital and controlled by 10 companies, mostly small Canadian firms seeking to generate interest in the market and attract investors.
Of these companies, only eight said they had exploration and wanted to invest in extracting lithium.
Mexico has deposits of this mineral located mostly in Sonora, a northern region, where drug traffickers and other organized crime gangs also operate.
Globally, lithium is mainly mined in South America and Australia, while China dominates the supply chain.
Based on the latest report from the US Geological Survey, Mexico is the ninth country with the largest lithium reserves in million tons, with a total of 1.7, while Bolivia (21), Argentina (19.3) and Chile (9 ,6) occupy the podium.
Source: Ambito
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