India's Critical Minerals Strategy and the Pakistan Factor: What Commodity Traders Need to Know

India published its list of 30 critical minerals in June 2023. Antimony, copper, molybdenum, tungsten, REEs, lithium — most of what we're sitting on in Gilgit-Baltistan is on it. And yet none of it will ever flow south across the LoC.

That's the strange part of this story. India needs these minerals badly. Pakistan has them, geologically speaking, on the same Himalayan-Karakoram belt. But the trade between us has been effectively zero since 2019, and nobody on either side expects that to change in the next decade. So when I talk to traders in Singapore or Dubai about the "Pakistan factor" in India's critical minerals strategy, we're not talking about direct trade. We're talking about competition for the same buyers, the same off-take agreements, and the same third-country processing capacity.

Here's what I think traders are still getting wrong.

India isn't just buying — it's locking up supply

KABIL (Khanij Bidesh India Ltd) was set up in 2019. Three PSUs — NALCO, HCL, MECL — pooled resources to acquire critical mineral assets abroad. The Argentina lithium deal in January 2024 got the headlines: five blocks in Catamarca, roughly 15,703 hectares, around USD 24 million committed. Small money in mining terms. But it signalled intent.

Since then India has signed critical mineral MoUs with Australia, Argentina, Chile, Zambia, DRC and most recently opened talks in Kazakhstan and Mongolia. The Ministry of Mines auctioned 20 critical mineral blocks domestically in the first tranche in late 2023, and honestly, the results were underwhelming — 13 got no bids or were annulled. Indian geology is what it is. The country has lithium indications in Jammu (the Reasi find, quoted at 5.9 million tonnes inferred) and REEs in Andhra, but the grades and the processing pathway aren't there yet at commercial scale.

So India's real strategy is offshore acquisition plus long-term off-take. That directly competes with what Chinese SOEs have been doing for twenty years, and what Japanese and Korean trading houses have been doing for forty.

And this is where Pakistan enters the picture — as a competing supplier, not a partner.

What the Pakistan factor actually means for a trader in Singapore or Rotterdam

Look, I'll be direct. If you're a commodity trader trying to build a critical minerals book for a European battery maker or a US defence prime, you have a South Asia problem. Your Indian counterparties are aggressive on price and volume commitments but their domestic production is thin. Their offshore assets take 7-10 years to reach production. Meanwhile the same buyer wants antimony next year, not in 2032.

Pakistan is the awkward answer nobody in Delhi will say out loud.

The antimony story makes this concrete. China banned antimony exports to the US in December 2024. Global prices went from around USD 13,000/tonne in early 2023 to north of USD 39,000/tonne by mid-2025. Tajikistan is now the world's largest producer at roughly 21,000 tonnes a year — but Tajik output is majority Chinese-controlled through Talco and the Anzob JV. India needs antimony for lead-acid batteries, flame retardants and defence (tri-sulphide for ammunition primers). It imported around 8,700 tonnes in FY23, almost entirely from China.

We have antimony showings in Krakal and along the Chalt-Nomal belt. Not proven reserves yet — I want to be honest about that — but stibnite veins with grab samples running 42% to 58% Sb, which is high-grade by any standard. A trader who wants to hedge Chinese antimony risk for a European buyer has maybe four serious options globally. Pakistan is one of them.

Same logic for tungsten (India imports nearly 100% of what it uses), and increasingly for molybdenum as India's stainless steel and specialty alloy demand climbs.

The geopolitics traders keep underestimating

Here's the thing about mineral supply chain geopolitics in South Asia — the interesting flows aren't India-Pakistan. They're Pakistan-China-third country, and Pakistan-Gulf-third country.

CPEC Phase 2 has an explicit minerals component now. The Saudi PIF signed a framework with Pakistan's SIFC in 2024 covering mining investment. The Reko Diq restart, with Barrick holding 50% and the Pakistani state entities holding the other half, is now scheduled for first production in 2028 — that's roughly 200,000 tonnes of copper and 250,000 ounces of gold annually at steady state, and every major trading house has been in Islamabad about the off-take.

For an overseas buyer, what this means practically: Pakistan mineral exports don't compete with Indian domestic supply because Indian domestic supply is small. They compete with the Indian offshore book — the Argentinian lithium, the Zambian copper, the Australian rare earths that KABIL is trying to secure.

And Pakistani material has one thing those don't. It's already here, on a mountain we can access in six months instead of six years.

I used to think the smart pitch to Western buyers was "diversify from China." I got that wrong at first. The smarter pitch, I've realised, is diversify from long lead-time offshore assets. Whether those assets are Chinese-controlled in Africa or Indian-controlled in Latin America, the problem for a European battery maker or a US defence contractor is the same — you need tonnes in 2026 and 2027, not committee meetings.

That's what I'd tell any trader trying to make sense of the India critical minerals strategy from the outside. Watch what KABIL buys. Watch which countries India signs MoUs with. Then ask yourself which of those minerals we can ship out of Karachi or through Gwadar in a quarter of the time.

The answer will surprise you on at least three of them.

What won't surprise you is that nobody in Delhi wants to have that conversation. Which is fine. The traders who close the deals aren't the ones waiting for governments to agree.