India has committed to jointly invest $6 million with the Australian government to explore cobalt and lithium mines Down Under over the coming six months.
The Khanij Bidesh India Limited (KABIL) has signed a preliminary agreement with Australia’s Critical Minerals Facilitation Office (CMFO) on this issue.
KABIL and CMFO will come together to conduct due diligence of select brownfield and greenfield projects to recognise cobalt and lithium mineral assets for final joint investment decisions and acquisitions.
This agreement even makes way for the inclusion of any other Indian state-run firm as an investment partner, Reuters reports.
It forecasts that the due diligence process will be rounded up and thus subsequent investment decisions could be taken over the next six months.
Latin American countries like Chile, Argentina and Bolivia have also been identified by India as potential places to carry out exploration of strategic minerals abroad.
The agreement with Australia comes at a time when the central government is carrying out the $2.4 billion worth production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme for companies to build battery cells locally for electric vehicles (EVs).
Lithium is an important raw material in order to make batteries for EVs.