Mexico transferred responsibility for lithium reserves to the Ministry of Energy, after nationalizing deposits of the precious mineral last April.
The official measure after the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, signed the decree to nationalize this strategic mineral in an act in the town of Bacadéhuachi, where the largest metal reserve in the territory is located.
The exploitation of Mexican lithium is now exclusive to the Government of the country.
The decree is one more step by the Government after the reform to the Mining Law of April 2022 that declared lithium as a public utility mineral whose exploitation will be the exclusive power of the State through a new public company, Lithium for Mexico (LitioMX), which It will depend on the Ministry of Energy.
“We are going to nationalize lithium so that it cannot be exploited by foreigners, neither from Russia, nor from China, nor from the United States, oil and lithium belong to the nation, to the people of Mexico,” López Obrador said during the act.