Ministry of Mines of India

And then we have to increase the private agencies also by giving some incentives so that they can come.

See, for example, I tell you, uh, Ministry of Mines and, has got an agency known as NMET, National Mineral Exploration.

Now it has been named as NEMTD, the Development also, means you can go outside.

They give, they fund only up to G3.

The second one I told you, conversion of the blocks into mining blocks, conver- operational block, I should say.

That should be fast.

And that, that is, uh, you must have appreciated that, uh, Ministry of Mines, uh, with other statutory bodies, particularly MoEFCC, you know, uh, has talked in, whether, has requested them and some, uh, uh, parameters have also been reduced.

Uh, that has to be faster.

Black mass makes up roughly forty to fifty percent of total weight of an EV battery, and it's called by this name because it contains a lot of graphite, which is naturally dark.

And last week, this black mass became a part of a discussion during a national seminar on critical minerals recycling in India, organized by the Ministry of Mines.

That's because the last year the government temporarily banned black mass exports because it wanted to retain as much of it at home as possible and build a stronger domestic ecosystem for battery recycling and refining.

And yet it found that black mass was still being exported by some shredding companies by using incorrect labels so that it could get through export checks.

Firstly, I'd like to say that the MMDR Act is the most consequential act for the mining industry in India, apart from maybe the National Critical Mineral Mission, which is focused on critical minerals and red earths.

But otherwise, the MMDR is really the most important regulation that the Ministry of Mines has.

And amendments to this over the years has been the most consequential for the industry as well.

For example, a very definitive change that happened through the 2015 amendment to the Act in 2015, like I was saying, was following the Colgate scandal.

Access to critical minerals matters less if the valuable processing stages remain concentrated abroad.

For further information, see Government of India, Press Information Bureau, Ministry of Mines, The Indian Express, and Money Control.

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