New Delhi: India is completely reliant on its northern neighbour China for the supply of Lithium and Lithium-ion, the raw materials used in the manufacturing of the advanced chemistry cell-based batteries that power mobile phones, laptops, electric vehicles and most other modern gadgets, showed the latest official data shared by the government on Monday.
India imported Lithium and Lithium-ion worth Rs 26,726 crores in the last three financial years. It included Lithium-ion worth Rs 26,204 crores and Lithium worth Rs 522 crores. In response to a question, the Union Minister of Parliamentary Affairs, Coal and Mines Pralhad Joshi informed the Rajya Sabha, that the country imported Lithium-ion worth Rs 8,574 crore in FY 2018-19, Rs 8,819 crore in 2019-20 and Lithium-ion worth Rs 8,811 crore in 2020-21.
The data shows that the demand for the raw material remained at almost the same level during the period. In the case of Lithium, the imports have been Rs 202 crore in FY 2018-19 and Rs 147 and Rs 173 crore respectively in the next two financial years.
India and China have fought a bitter boundary war in 1962 and their armies have been deployed in eyeball-to-eyeball mode in the Ladakh region where 20 Indian soldiers were killed in a bloody clash with Chinese soldiers in the Galwan valley in June 2020.
Dependence on China
China and Hong Kong, which is a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China, supplied more than 96% of India’s Lithium imports in 2018-19 while Vietnam accounted for more than 3% of the supplies as all other countries accounted for less than 1% of the Indian imports of the raw material.
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Similarly, China and Hong Kong accounted for nearly 94% of India’s total imports of Lithium-ion, followed by Vietnam 3.67% and other countries in 2019-20. In 2020-21, the share of China and Hong Kong in India’s Lithium-ion imports was again over 96%.
In the case of Lithium, which accounts for only a minuscule part of India’s Lithium and Lithium-ion imports, the country’s imports have been at around Rs 200 crore or less in the last three years. China and Hong Kong accounted for over 75% of the supplies in 2018-19. Their share in India’s Lithium imports was 73% and 69% in 2019-20 and 2020-21 respectively.
Scouting Lithium within the country
Pralhad Joshi said that in order to reduce the country’s dependence on imported Lithium and Lithium-ion, the Geological Survey of India has carried out 14 projects on Lithium and associated elements in Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Meghalaya, Karnataka and Rajasthan.
GSI has taken up 5 projects on Lithium and associated minerals in Arunachal Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jammu & Kashmir and Rajasthan in the Field Season Programme (FSP) 2020-21.
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The minister said the preliminary surveys on the surface and limited subsurface exploration done by the Atomic Minerals Directorate for Exploration and Research have shown the presence of Lithium resources of 1,600 tonnes (inferred category) in the Marlagalla area of the Mandya district in Karnataka.
