2023-06-30 23:15:00
With our correspondent in Bolivia, Nils Sabin
By signing two agreements, one with a Russian company, the other with a Chinese group, Bolivia wants to boost its lithium production. These two contracts provide nearly 1.5 billion dollars of investment for the creation of two lithium mines.
The government’s objective is for each mine to produce 25,000 tons of the precious metal per year, within two years. These announcements were met with skepticism by Gonzalo Mondaca, a researcher specializing in lithium mining in Bolivia.
« In general, the announcements leave a lot of uncertainty, because the content of the agreements is not public. The deadlines are very short and we do not know what is the counterpart for these large investments. “, he explained.
A production 60 times lower than Chile
This makes nearly fifteen years that Bolivia seeks to extract the lithium present in its soils and yet, in 2022, the country only extracted 600 tons. That is 60 times less than the chilean neighborthe leading regional producer.
« The critical point is that it is the foreign companies that install the infrastructure, but it is the Bolivian state that manages the production and unfortunately it has a bad track record in this area. », continued Gonzalo Mondaca.
The sites for the construction of the two mines should begin in three months, one in the salar of Pastos Grandes and the other in the immense salar of Uyuni.
Earlier this year, Bolivia had already signed a lithium mining contract with another Chinese conglomerate.
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