Chile sees lithium plan expanding trade ties, foreign investment

Chile’s government expects its new lithium strategy to expand international trade relationships while attracting more foreign investment to the industry. 

President Gabriel Boric’s administration is in talks with more than 40 investors from more than a dozen countries interested in investing in the country’s lithium industry, according to Claudia Sanhueza, Chile’s deputy trade minister. She declined to be more specific. 

“Our lithium plan will deepen what Chile has with the rest of the world in terms of trade and investments,” said Sanhueza in an interview at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Detroit.  

Boric unveiled a new model last month in which the state will take a controlling stake in future public-private partnerships in Chile’s lithium deposits. The government’s goal is to attract more private capital, but also to strengthen state intervention to ensure environment protection and increased value added. 

Chile has the world’s biggest reserves of lithium, a metal that’s critical to the global clean-energy transition. 

“The biggest challenge we have moving forward is for us to be capable of adding value to what is extracted,” Sanhueza said.