Latin America’s critical minerals push: IDB funding and MET lens for mine planners
Reviewed by Tom Sullivan

First reported on MINING.com
30 Second Briefing
Latin America is accelerating critical mineral value-chain development as the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and EU deploy a €6.3 million grant to unlock about €120 million in IDB funding for lithium, copper and rare earths projects in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile and Ecuador. The IDB’s Mining for the Energy Transition (MET) programme is targeting regulatory reform, improved geological data and low‑carbon mining, while Washington signals a preference for sourcing and processing within the hemisphere. IDB is also financing extraction, including a $100 million loan into Rio Tinto’s $2.5 billion battery‑grade lithium project in Salta, Argentina.
Technical Brief
- IDB’s €6.3m EU grant leverages roughly 19x additional IDB capital for mineral projects.
- Latin America currently holds ~60% of identified global lithium reserves, heavily concentrating upstream resource risk.
- The region produces about 46% of world copper, with Chile and Peru dominating red metal output.
- Brazil hosts the world’s second-largest rare earths reserves, but production is constrained by technical and commercial barriers.
- Argentina exports ~70% of its lithium to China, then re-imports processed product at 8–9x the price.
- IDB is extending a $100m loan into Rio Tinto’s $2.5bn battery-grade lithium project in Salta, Argentina.
- Long-term offtake, exemplified by a 20-year Chile–Germany green hydrogen contract, is cited as critical to closing processing cost gaps with Asia.
Our Take
With Latin America already accounting for 46% of global copper production and 60% of identified lithium reserves, the EU–IDB ‘Mining for the Energy Transition’ financing push effectively positions the region as the swing supplier in many of the critical-mineral market scenarios tracked across our 113 Mining stories.
The €6.3 million EU grant unlocking about €120 million of IDB funding signals that multilateral lenders are moving towards relatively high leverage ratios for critical minerals, which could lower the cost of capital for projects like Rio Tinto’s $2.5 billion Salta lithium development compared with standalone commercial debt.
Argentina sending 70% of its lithium exports to China, while Chile signs a 20‑year green hydrogen deal with Germany, underscores how Latin America’s critical minerals and energy offtake is bifurcating between Asian and European buyers, a pattern that will likely influence how new IDB-backed projects structure long-term sales and processing agreements.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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