China and Russia Agree to a $1.4 billion Deal to Extract Lithium from Bolivia

According to the government in La Paz, Chinese and Russian businesses would spend more than $1.4 billion on lithium mining in Bolivia, one of the nations with the highest deposits of the mineral used in electric vehicle batteries.

President Luis Arce announced at a public ceremony that China’s Citic Guoan and Russia’s Uranium One Group, both with significant government stakes, would collaborate with Bolivia’s state-owned YLB to develop two lithium carbonate processing units.

The “white gold” of the renewable energy revolution, lithium is a highly sought-after element found in cell phone and electric vehicle batteries.

Arce said that “we are consolidating the nation’s industrialization process.”

Bolivia, which claims to have the greatest reserves in the world, and a Chinese consortium, CBC, inked a contract in January to construct two lithium battery factories.

Each of the two new facilities will have the ability to generate up to 25,000 metric tons of lithium carbonate annually, according to a statement from the nation’s energy ministry.

The building process will start in around three months.

Among the top consumers of lithium from Bolivia are China and Russia.

Australia and South America are the primary mining regions for lithium.