Sucre (Bolivia), Feb 3 (.) Bolivia will honor lithium agreements concluded by the previous government with Russia and China, provided the integrity and transparency of those deals are confirmed, President Rodrigo Paz said.
The deals will be reviewed and made public to allow proper scrutiny, Paz told the Financial Times in an interview published Tuesday.
“They will be respected if and when they are transparent,” Paz was quoted as saying.
Bolivian Economy Minister Jose Gabriel Espinosa told Sputnik last week that the South American nation would review the agreements to assess their compliance with new regulations.
On September 11, 2024, the Bolivian government signed a contract with Uranium One Group, a subsidiary of Russia’s nuclear giant Rosatom, to build a lithium carbonate plant with an annual capacity of 14,000 tonnes and investments of $970 million. Two weeks later, an agreement was signed with China’s Hong Kong CBC to construct two lithium carbonate plants with comparable investment.
Bolivia holds an estimated 23 million tonnes of lithium reserves and is part of the so-called “lithium triangle,” which contains more than 50% of the world’s lithium reserves, alongside Argentina, with 19 million tonnes, and Chile, with 9 million tonnes.
In the Salar, Bolivia holds the keys to vast lithium reserves – a critical mineral in seemingly limitless demand by the international community for electric vehicles, batteries, phones, and more. The salt flats may be the solution to maximizing investor interest in the Bolivian economy, both domestically and abroad, according to Bolivia’s new president, Rodrigo Paz.
Paz took office last November after a campaign promising private sector-led growth, a decentralized government, and increased foreign direct investment (FDI). For Bolivians and the international lithium mining industry alike, there is cautious optimism that this is not just another false start after 20 years of tail-spinning economics under successive governments from the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) party.
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