Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2680 actions· ✨ 93 recent

On 21 February 2026 in New Delhi, during the State Visit of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, India and Brazil signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation in the Field of Critical Minerals between India's Ministry of Mines and Brazil's Ministry of Mines and Energy. The MoU establishes a bilateral framework spanning the entire critical-minerals value chain — exploration, mining, processing, recycling, and refining — with explicit focus on rare-earth elements, lithium, nickel, cobalt, niobium, manganese, and other strategic minerals. It was issued alongside a broader Joint Statement targeting USD 30 billion in bilateral trade by 2030 and a ten-year strategic-partnership roadmap covering AI, defence, energy, agriculture, and digital transformation.

On 1 February 2026 Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman tabled India's Union Budget 2026-27, with Customs Notification No. 02/2026-Customs (dated 1 Feb 2026, effective 2 Feb 2026) implementing the customs-duty package. The notification zero-rates basic customs duty (BCD) on (i) capital goods imported for domestic processing of critical minerals — crushing, beneficiation, refining, chemical-processing, separation/purification, and metallurgical/alloy-making equipment; (ii) capital goods for lithium-ion cell manufacturing for battery energy storage systems (BESS), extending the 2024-25 EV-cell exemption to stationary storage; and (iii) twelve additional critical minerals plus cobalt powder and lithium-ion battery scrap, on top of the 25 critical minerals already exempted in the FY2024-25 budget. In parallel, critical minerals (including monazite / rare-earth concentrate) are migrated from the customs-exemption notification mechanism into the First Schedule of the Customs Tariff Act at Nil BCD, effective 1 May 2026 — a tariffisation step that locks the rate into primary legislation rather than annually renewable notification. The Budget also commits to dedicated critical-mineral / rare-earth-magnet processing corridors in Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Structurally this is the fiscal/tariff layer underneath the National Critical Mineral Mission (NCMM, Jan 2025) and the National Manufacturing Mission (Feb 2025): NCMM funds capex and overseas asset acquisition (₹34,300 cr), this Budget removes the import-duty drag on the equipment needed to actually run domestic processing lines. It complements the REPM scheme (Nov 2025) for sintered rare-earth magnets and Semicon Mission 2.0 (Feb 2026) on the demand side for refined critical minerals.

The Government of India, exercising powers under Section 11C of the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957, amended the First Schedule on 29 January 2026 to add "Coking Coal" explicitly to Part A (Coal expanded to "Coal, including Coking Coal") and to Part D (Critical and Strategic Minerals list). The designation transfers exclusive auction authority over coking coal mining blocks from state governments to the Central Government and extends the existing EIA public-consultation exemption — previously applicable to atomic and strategic minerals — to coking coal projects. India imports approximately 80% of its coking coal requirements (primarily from Australia, the United States, Russia, and Canada); the classification is the statutory pathway to fast-track domestic exploration, NMEDT funding eligibility, and KABIL-backed overseas-acquisition mandates for coking coal.

India's Ministry of Mines on 19 January 2026 notified the country's first national Tailings Policy, establishing a standardised framework for the systematic exploration, sampling and economic evaluation of critical and strategic minerals from secondary sources — tailings, mine dumps, slag, anode slimes, red mud and fly ash — at existing mines. The policy designates the Geological Survey of India (GSI), Indian Bureau of Mines (IBM) and Atomic Minerals Directorate (AMD) as the implementing agencies, and mandates inter-ministry coordination across the Ministries of Coal, Mines, Petroleum and Atomic Energy because critical-mineral host materials cut across sectoral jurisdictions. It supplements the National Critical Mineral Mission (2025-01-29) by adding a secondary-source recovery track aimed at lithium, cobalt, nickel and rare earth elements found as companion minerals in legacy mining waste, with the explicit objective of reducing import dependency.