US-Philippines Critical Minerals MoU (FORGE founding bilateral)

Mechanism

A non-binding intergovernmental MoU establishing a bilateral framework to:

• Support stable and resilient supply and value chains in critical

minerals and rare earths in both countries.

• Promote sustainable and responsible resource management and fair

market practices.

• Build local Philippine capacity for **domestic value addition and

processing** — explicitly steering investment toward refining and beneficiation rather than raw-ore export.

• Cooperate on mapping, geological survey, processing, refining,

and recycling of critical minerals.

• Channel US technical know-how and (separately, via FORGE

follow-on instruments) investment financing to support Philippine processing capacity.

The MoU is one of eleven founding-member bilateral instruments signed at the inaugural Critical Minerals Ministerial on 4 Feb 2026 alongside Argentina, Cook Islands, Ecuador, Guinea, Morocco, Paraguay, Peru, UAE, UK, and Uzbekistan.

Why severity 3

• The Philippines is the world's **second-largest nickel ore

producer** and a globally significant cobalt and copper source. Manila's pivot from raw-ore export to domestic processing — if it materialises commercially — affects the global nickel-laterite refining map, currently dominated by Chinese-financed Indonesian HPAL/RKEF capacity (Morowali, Weda Bay).

• The MoU itself is non-binding. Severity 3 reflects framework

status; an upgrade to 4 is warranted if/when DFC + EXIM follow-on instruments crystallise into actual project financing for Philippine processing facilities (cf. the US-Uzbekistan track which had a 14-day gap between MoU and DFC/EXIM Heads of Terms).

• Reinforces and is reinforced by the September 2025 Philippine

Enhanced Fiscal Regime for Mining (RA 12253) which already raised royalty + tax burden on raw-ore exporters precisely to tilt incentives toward domestic processing.

Downstream implications

• Anti-China-axis-of-nickel signal. Indonesia's hilirisasi

succeeded by attracting Chinese smelter capital. The PH-US framework is the alternate-path bet: Western-financed processing built on US offtake demand. Whether it can compete on capex / opex against the Indonesia-China cost stack is the open commercial question.

• Complement to RA 12253 Enhanced Fiscal Regime. Domestic

fiscal stick (royalties + windfall tax on raw-ore exports) + bilateral processing carrot (US offtake + financing pathway) is a coherent two-instrument industrial policy.

• **Geopolitical coherence with the Squad / Indo-Pacific

alignment.** Philippines is now embedded in the FORGE framework alongside Australia, Japan, and the UK — providing a Southeast Asian non-Indonesia node for processing diversification.

• EPHE / mining-sector positive at the margin. The Philippine

mining industry public response (per Inquirer, Manila Times) was uniformly positive. Concrete project pipeline depends on follow-on DFC / EXIM financing instruments.

Open questions

• Will a DFC + EXIM Heads of Terms follow (matching the

Uzbekistan pattern) and what scale? Manila lacks an analogue to Uzbekistan's Fund for Reconstruction and Development as a counterparty for an equity-vehicle structure.

• Which specific processing projects (HPAL, RKEF, REE separation)

are the targets? The Philippine government has flagged Tampakan (copper-gold) and Mindanao nickel-laterite belt projects as candidates.

• Tampakan reactivation: does this MoU change the political

economy around Tampakan's open-pit permits, given local opposition?

• How does this interact with Philippines-Japan and

Philippines-Australia critical-minerals cooperation tracks already underway?