Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2663 actions· ✨ 89 recent

Vietnam issued Decree 182/2024/ND-CP on 31 December 2024, establishing the Investment Support Fund (ISF) to provide direct cash subsidies for high-tech enterprises and R&D centers. The decree offers up to 50% of initial investment costs for semiconductor and AI R&D projects meeting qualifying thresholds. The ISF is managed by the Ministry of Planning and Investment, with support available for operating costs, fixed asset investments, workforce training, and high-tech product manufacturing.

The National Assembly of the Republic of Korea passed on 27 December 2024 a comprehensive amendment to the Act on Prevention of Divulgence and Protection of Industrial Technology (산업기술의 유출방지 및 보호에 관한 법률, the "ITA" or "Industrial Technology Protection Act"), effective 22 July 2025. The amendment grants MOTIE direct statutory authority to block or reverse unapproved exports and overseas transactions involving National Core Technologies (NCTs) — including M&As, technology-transfer transactions, and foreign-investment events — without requiring interdepartmental coordination that was necessary under prior enforcement-decree authority. Entities already verified as NCT holders must complete formal registration with MOTIE within six months of the effective date (by approximately 22 January 2026). Punitive damages for wilful NCT infringement are raised from 3x to 5x actual damages, and criminal fines for overseas NCT leakage are raised from KRW 1.5 billion to KRW 6.5 billion.

The Republic of Korea's National Assembly passed the Framework Act on the Development of Artificial Intelligence and the Establishment of a Foundation for Trustworthiness ("AI Basic Act") in plenary session on 26 December 2024, consolidating 19 separate AI bills tabled in the 22nd National Assembly. The statute was promulgated on 21 January 2025 and takes effect on 22 January 2026 after a one-year preparation period. Korea becomes the second jurisdiction worldwide — after the EU AI Act — to enact a comprehensive horizontal AI law, and the first in the Asia-Pacific. The Act establishes a risk-tiered regime targeting "high-impact" AI in healthcare, energy, public services, employment decisions, and generative-AI labelling, with extraterritorial reach over foreign providers whose systems affect the Korean market or users (mandatory local representative). It creates an AI Safety Institute, a national AI policy "control tower," and R&D / standardisation programmes under MSIT. Penalties are modest by international comparison — fines up to KRW 30 million plus a one-year grace period before full enforcement.

Zambia's Parliament enacted the Property Transfer Tax (Amendment) Act No. 27 of 2024, assented to by President Hichilema on 24 December 2024 and in force from 1 January 2025. The Act introduces a first-ever dedicated Property Transfer Tax (PTT) schedule for mining rights: 10% of realised value on transfers of mining licences and mineral processing licences, and 8% on transfers of exploration licences. The measure directly raises the transaction cost of copper and cobalt mine acquisitions, stake transfers, and licence assignments across the Zambia Copperbelt. It is the fifth distinct fiscal or governance instrument enacted since 2024 in Zambia's rolling reform of its mining regulatory architecture.

Malaysia's Personal Data Protection (Amendment) Act 2024 (Act A1727), gazetted 17 October 2024, enters its third and final commencement phase on 1 June 2025 per commencement order P.U.(B) 522/2024. Phase 3 activates sections 6 and 9 of the amending Act, which impose mandatory Data Protection Officer (DPO) appointment thresholds, a 72-hour breach-notification duty to the Commissioner, and a statutory data-portability right, bringing Malaysia's PDPA broadly into alignment with GDPR and the ASEAN Model AI Governance Framework.

On 23 December 2024 the US Bureau of Industry and Security published a final rule (89 FR 104408; FR Doc 2024-30425; RIN 0694-AJ83) amending the Export Administration Regulations to implement decisions adopted at the Australia Group's 2023 and 2024 plenary meetings. The rule adds new ECCN 2B352.k controlling instruments for the automated chemical synthesis of peptides that are partly or entirely automated and capable of generating peptides at a system-synthesis scale of 1 mmol or greater, finalising the April 2023 BIS proposed rule. It also adds dipropylamine to ECCN 1C350.d.11, neosaxitoxin to ECCN 1C351.d.12, revises the 1C351.d.3 entry from "botulinum toxins" to "botulinum neurotoxins" to capture all serotypes, adds a "minimum detection limit" definition for toxic-gas monitors in 2B351.a, and explicitly captures single-use centrifugal separators in 2B352.c. License requirements (CB, AT, CW where applicable) apply for export to non-Australia-Group destinations; the rule is effective on publication.

On 22 December 2024 the Politburo of the Communist Party of Vietnam, under General Secretary Tô Lâm, issued Resolution 57-NQ/TW designating science, technology, innovation, and national digital transformation as Vietnam's "top strategic breakthrough" through 2030 with vision to 2045. The resolution targets ≥50% digital-economy share of GDP, top-30 global ranking in innovation and digital transformation, and at least 10 globally-competitive Vietnamese digital-technology enterprises by 2030. It identifies data, AI, blockchain, and IoT as priority bottlenecks and operates as the parent/umbrella authority under which all subsequent Government, National Assembly, Prime-Ministerial and Ministerial tech-industrial instruments are formulated. Operational implementation runs through Government Resolution 03/NQ-CP of 9 January 2025 (action programme).

The Minerals Regulation Commission Act, No. 14 of 2024 repeals and replaces Zambia's 2015 Mines and Minerals Development Act in its entirety, establishing a new autonomous Minerals Regulation Commission (MRC) as the country's central mining-sector regulator together with a standalone Mining Appeals Tribunal. The Act restructures licensing, royalty administration, monitoring and enforcement, and creates a dedicated dispute-resolution architecture separating regulatory and adjudicatory functions. Assented to on 20 December 2024 and gazetted on 26 December 2024, the Act took effect on 13 June 2025 pursuant to the Minerals Regulation Commission Act, 2024 (Commencement) Order, 2025 (SI 42 of 2025) signed by the Minister of Mines and Minerals Development on 3 June 2025.

Regulation (EU) 2025/38 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 December 2024 lays down measures to strengthen solidarity and capacities in the Union to detect, prepare for, and respond to cyber threats and incidents, and amends Regulation (EU) 2021/694 (Digital Europe Programme). Published in the Official Journal on 15 January 2025; entered into force on 4 February 2025 (20 days after OJ publication). The regulation establishes (i) a European Cybersecurity Alert System composed of national and cross-border Security Operations Centre (SOC) hubs interconnected EU-wide, (ii) a Cybersecurity Emergency Mechanism funded through the Digital Europe Programme, (iii) an EU Cybersecurity Reserve of trusted private-sector incident-response providers, and (iv) an ENISA-led post-incident review mechanism for significant or large-scale cybersecurity incidents. It complements the Cyber Resilience Act (Reg 2024/2847) and the NIS2 Directive as the third leg of the EU horizontal-cybersecurity stack.

President Claudia Sheinbaum's government published in the Diario Oficial de la Federación on 19 Dec 2024 a decree amending the General Import & Export Tax Law (TIGIE) and the IMMEX Decree. The decree imposes a 35% temporary import duty on 138 finished-apparel tariff lines (Chapters 61, 62, 63 plus tariff item 9404.40.01) and a 15% duty on 17 textile-input tariff lines (Chapters 52, 55, 58, 60), totalling 155 fractions. Concurrently, 302 tariff fractions in Chapters 61/62/63 are removed from IMMEX duty-deferral eligibility (moved out of Annex II Section C into Annex I). The measure exempts countries with which Mexico has an FTA (notably USMCA partners) and is in force from 20 Dec 2024 until 23 Apr 2026.

The U.S. Department of Commerce, through the International Trade Administration's Enforcement and Compliance unit, issued a final rule revising the annexes to 19 CFR Part 351 to modernize the forms, certifications, and instructions used by parties to antidumping (AD) and countervailing duty (CVD) proceedings. The modernization updates legacy paperwork (entries-of-appearance, questionnaire certifications, scope-application templates, service lists) for the electronic ACCESS filing era and aligns the annexes with Commerce's 2024 substantive AD/CVD rulemakings. A correcting amendment published 31 March 2025 (FR Doc. 2025-05482) fixed inadvertent date and regulatory-language errors in the December rule but left its substantive content unchanged.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued a final rule on 19 December 2024 amending 32 parts of 31 CFR chapter V to modernize the general licenses authorizing payments for legal services from funds originating outside the United States. The rule replaces the annual reporting requirement that had applied to such payments with a 10-year recordkeeping requirement, aligning the legal-services general licenses with the new 10-year statute of limitations for IEEPA/TWEA violations and OFAC's parallel 5→10-year recordkeeping extension (31 CFR 501). The rule also standardises legal-services general-license language across programs — removing legacy letter-of-engagement prerequisites in certain parts (e.g., 31 CFR 594, 597), updating 31 CFR 549 (Lebanon) and 31 CFR 576 (Iraq Stabilization and Insurgency) to remove the requirement that payments for authorised legal services be separately specifically licensed, and harmonising the 31 CFR 591 (Venezuela-related) authorisation language. The rule was effective 19 December 2024 with an applicability date of 12 March 2025.

Regulation (EU) 2025/40, published in the Official Journal on 22 January 2025 and entering into force on 11 February 2025, replaces the 1994 Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive 94/62/EC with a directly-applicable Regulation. It mandates binding recycled-content targets for plastic packaging (by polymer and format, reaching 30–65% by 2030 with higher targets by 2040), minimum reusable-packaging shares for beverages and transport, recyclability standards for all packaging placed on the EU market from 2030, deposit-return-scheme obligations for beverage containers from 2029, and bans on specified single-use plastic packaging formats. General application begins 12 August 2026, with staggered compliance windows extending to 2030 and beyond, affecting all non-EU exporters shipping consumer goods, beverages, or e-commerce fulfilment into the EU single market.

Loi n° 2024-1109 du 18 décembre 2024 portant Budget de l'État pour l'année 2025 (and its annexe fiscale, JO n° 21 of 26 December 2024, entered into force 10 January 2025) raises Côte d'Ivoire's gold ad valorem royalty (taxe ad valorem sur l'or) by two percentage points across all five price tiers — from 3% to 5% at gold ≤ USD 1,000/oz up to 6% to 8% at gold > USD 2,000/oz. The increase applies to all gold producers operating under the Code Minier régime and is collected on the value of gold extracted at the applicable USD-per-ounce reference price. First IPTM entry for Côte d'Ivoire; sits alongside the wider West/Central African mining-fiscal-tightening cycle (Mali 2024 implementing decree, Burkina Faso 2024 ALT mining code, Madagascar 2023 mining code refonte) and reflects a Ouattara-government posture of capturing more of the gold-price super-cycle for the state budget.

Mauritania's Loi n°2024-045 of 18 December 2024 establishes a horizontal local-content statutory framework covering the mining, hydrocarbons, gas, and energy sectors. The law requires operators and their subcontractors to submit triennial forecasting plans and annual performance reports on national employment and local-supplier integration, and mandates a Conseil National du Contenu Local to develop national strategy and policy. An implementing decree approved by the Council of Ministers on 2 September 2025 operationalises the law's institutional architecture, creating a digital monitoring platform for centralised employment and subcontracting traceability and introducing performance-incentive and administrative-sanction regimes.

Ethiopia's Banking Business Proclamation No. 1360/2025, ratified by the House of Peoples' Representatives on 17 December 2024 and gazetted in March 2025, repeals Proclamation 592/2008 and opens Ethiopia's banking sector to foreign participation for the first time since the 1974 Derg-era nationalisations. Foreign banks may enter via subsidiary establishment, branch licensing, representative offices, or equity acquisition in existing domestic banks. A single strategic foreign investor is capped at 40% ownership per domestic bank, with aggregate foreign ownership across all investors capped at 49%. The reform positions Ethiopia — Africa's second-most-populous country — as a competitor to Nairobi, Lagos, and Johannesburg as an African banking centre, unlocking entry plans by Standard Bank, KCB Group, Equity Bank, ABSA, and GCC-based institutions.

The European Commission adopted Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/4 on 17 December 2024, imposing definitive five-year anti-dumping duties on imports of titanium dioxide (TiO₂) originating in China, published in the OJ on 9 January 2025. Duty rates are differentiated by Chinese exporter: €0.25/kg for Anhui Jinhe Star (Gold Star), €0.74/kg for Lomon Billions Group and all non-cooperating exporters, and €0.64/kg for other cooperating producers — converting the provisional ad-valorem duties (14.4%–39.7%) imposed by CR 2024/1923 in July 2024 into specific definitive measures covering CN codes 3206 11 00 and 3206 19 00. China filed WTO dispute DS636 in April 2025 challenging the measure.

Myanmar's State Administration Council (SAC) Ministry of Commerce issued Notification 93/2024 on 17 December 2024, permitting foreign-majority-owned companies (more than 35% foreign equity) to legally export eight product categories including refined ores. Prior to this instrument, only state-owned economic enterprises (SOEEs) had unambiguous export rights under the February 2021 SOEE Law, leaving foreign-equity joint ventures in procedural ambiguity. Exports of refined ores require recommendations and metal selling/purchasing permits from the Department of Mines and relevant authorities, creating a formal compliance layer for foreign-equity mineral operations exporting tin, tungsten, and rare-earth concentrates from Myanmar.

On 16 December 2024 the Council of the European Union adopted Council Regulation (EU) 2024/3192 amending Regulation (EU) 833/2014, the 15th package of restrictive measures against Russia. The package adds 84 asset-freeze listings (54 individuals and 30 entities) under Regulation 269/2014 — for the first time including fully-fledged designations of seven Chinese individuals and entities supplying drone components, machine tools, and dual-use goods to the Russian military-industrial complex. It expands the EU shadow-fleet vessel- ban list by 52 tankers (total 79), activates the standalone EU hybrid- threats sanctions regime with its first 16-individual / 3-entity designations, extends the wind-down derogation for divestment from Russian subsidiaries to 31 December 2025, and reinforces anti- circumvention contractual clauses on EU exporters of dual-use goods.

The U.S. Department of Commerce, through the International Trade Administration's Enforcement and Compliance unit, issued a final rule amending 19 CFR Part 351 to enhance the administration of the antidumping (AD) and countervailing duty (CVD) trade-remedy laws. The final rule (FR Doc. 2024-29245, 89 FR effective 15 Jan 2025) operationalises the proposals in the July 2024 NPRM (89 FR 57286), tightening procedures for cash-deposit and liquidation instructions, scope determinations, certifications, and treatment of non-market-economy and particular-market- situation findings — areas central to the second Biden-Trump hand-off in trade-remedy enforcement. A correcting amendment (FR Doc. 2025-05481, effective 31 Mar 2025) restored inadvertently deleted CFR language and fixed punctuation/spelling errors without changing substantive scope.

President Paul Biya promulgated Décret n° 2024/05061 on 13 December 2024, operationalising the procedural architecture of the 2023 Code Minier (Loi n° 2023/014) for the issuance, transfer, renewal, and withdrawal of mining titles, exploration permits, and exploitation licences. The decree establishes the administrative workflow through which SONAMINES exercises its 10% free-carry right and the State may take equity participation, making it the gating instrument for upstream FDI in Cameroonian iron-ore (Mbalam-Nabeba), bauxite (Minim-Martap), and cobalt-nickel (Nkamouna) projects. A companion Décret n° 2024/05062 (modalités des opérations minières) was issued the same date to complete the implementation package.

Greece enacted Law 5164/2024, published in Government Gazette ΦΕΚ A' 202 on 12 December 2024, amending the Strategic Investments framework of Law 4864/2021 to create a new "Flagship Investments" sub-category with a 45-day strategic-approval procedure, up to 12-year income-tax stabilisation, cash grants, accelerated depreciation, and location-based incentives. Eligible projects explicitly include the production, extraction, refining and processing of EU-designated critical and strategic raw materials (aluminium, lithium, gallium, germanium per Regulation (EU) 2024/1252), circular-economy investments (reuse, repair, recycling), and the shipbuilding and maritime industry. The law is Greece's first foundational statutory alignment to the EU Critical Raw Materials Act and re-anchors Greek industrial-policy architecture to allied CRM and strategic-autonomy objectives.

The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) amended the Export Administration Regulations by adding 8 entities to the Entity List under the destinations of Burma (2), China (2), and Russia (4), citing actions contrary to US foreign-policy interests, primarily enabling human-rights violations through aerial attacks on civilians (Burma), Uyghur surveillance (China), and facial-recognition targeting of protesters (Russia). All designated entities require licenses for all items subject to the EAR with a presumption of denial. The rule was effective immediately on publication, December 11, 2024.

Australia enacted the Taxation (Multinational—Global and Domestic Minimum Tax) Act 2024 (No. 132, 2024) and its companion Imposition Act (No. 133, 2024), receiving royal assent on 10 December 2024, together implementing all three OECD/G20 GloBE charges in a single legislative cycle: an Income Inclusion Rule (IIR), an Undertaxed Profits Rule (UTPR), and a Qualified Domestic Minimum Top-up Tax (QDMTT). The IIR and QDMTT apply to fiscal years beginning on or after 1 January 2024 (retroactive at enactment); the UTPR applies to fiscal years beginning on or after 1 January 2025. All three charges apply to Australian members of MNE groups with consolidated annual revenue ≥ EUR 750 million, administered by the Australian Taxation Office.

Tunisia's Finance Law for 2025 (Loi n° 2024-48, signed 9 December 2024, published in JORT n° 149 on 10 December 2024) institutes under Article 38 a one-year Contribution Conjoncturelle — a cyclical windfall-style fiscal levy — applicable to all enterprises subject to the standard 15% corporate income tax rate whose 2023 turnover exceeded 20 million dinars (excluding VAT). The contribution is set at 2% of the taxable profits for fiscal year 2025, with a minimum floor of 1,000 dinars, and is explicitly non-deductible from the corporate income tax base. The measure is a budget-financing instrument adopted in the context of the stalled IMF Extended Fund Facility programme (suspended since 2023) and constitutes the IPTM register's second Tunisia-issuer action, extending the LF-year-on-year Tunisian fiscal-policy arc established by LF2024 Art. 33.

UAE Cabinet Decision No. 142 of 2024, announced 9 December 2024 and formally gazetted 11 February 2025, introduces a Domestic Minimum Top-Up Tax (DMTT) on UAE constituent entities of Multinational Enterprise (MNE) groups with consolidated annual revenues ≥ EUR 750 million in at least two of the four preceding fiscal years. The DMTT ensures a 15% minimum effective tax rate (ETR) on UAE-source profits, functioning as a Qualified Domestic Minimum Top-up Tax (QDMTT) under the OECD/G20 Pillar Two GloBE framework, thereby giving the UAE first-priority taxing right before any IIR top-up by a parent-jurisdiction authority. The measure applies to fiscal years beginning on or after 1 January 2025. The UAE deliberately excluded the Income Inclusion Rule (IIR) and Under-Taxed Profits Rule (UTPR) from this primary instrument, deferring those to subsequent Cabinet Decisions; the QDMTT-only architecture mirrors Singapore's MEMTA and Switzerland's MindStV as the first-mover design choice for established low-tax financial hubs.

The National Upstream Petroleum Local Content Policy (NUPLCP), approved by Namibia's Cabinet in December 2024 and finalised by the Ministry of Mines and Energy in March 2025, requires all upstream petroleum operators to submit Local Content Plans detailing Namibian workforce hiring, skills transfer, and local supplier engagement commitments as a condition of exploration and production licences. The policy is the primary industrial-policy instrument governing Namibia's nascent offshore oil sector, targeting the Orange Basin deepwater blocks (PEL 39, PEL 56, PEL 83, PEL 85, PEL 90, PEL 91) where Shell, TotalEnergies, Galp, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and QatarEnergy have confirmed ~11+ billion barrels of recoverable resource with a 2027–2029 FID horizon and projected peak output of ~700 kbpd by 2030+. Enforcement is initially guidance-based with a dedicated monitoring framework under development; critics note weak enforcement infrastructure as the principal implementation risk.

China's Ministry of Commerce announced on 3 December 2024 (MOFCOM Announcement No. 46 of 2024) a formal ban on dual-use exports to the United States of gallium, germanium, antimony and superhard materials including diamond and cubic boron nitride. The measure also imposed strict end-use review on graphite exports to the US, with extra scrutiny of military end-uses. It came one day after BIS issued a major export- control package on 2 December 2024 expanding controls on Chinese semiconductor equipment and adding 140 entities to the Entity List, and was framed by MOFCOM as a national- security countermeasure.

Saudi Arabia's General Authority of Foreign Trade (GAFT), under Chairman Dr. Majed Alkassabi, issued a final affirmative determination imposing definitive anti-dumping duties on Sulphonated Naphthalene Formaldehyde (SNF) — a concrete superplasticiser/water- reducing admixture — originating in or exported from China and Russia. The decision was published in the official gazette on 2 December 2024 and took effect 3 December 2024, directing the Zakat, Tax and Customs Authority to collect duties in the range of 18.12%-34% for five years (to 2 December 2029). The investigation was initiated 20 November 2023 following a complaint from the Saudi domestic industry.

The US Bureau of Industry and Security issued its largest single export-control package targeting China's semiconductor industry on 2 December 2024, with three layered measures (final rules published in the Federal Register 5 December 2024). First, controls on high-bandwidth memory (HBM) above set performance thresholds — blocking the memory architecture that is foundational to AI training. Second, additions of 24 semiconductor manufacturing equipment item types to the Commerce Control List, covering deposition, etch, ion- implant, advanced packaging, and metrology categories. Third, Entity List designations for 140+ entities, the bulk Chinese semiconductor companies + equipment makers + investment vehicles, including major Chinese fab tooling firms. The package triggered MOFCOM's same-day-following retaliation (filed: 2024-12-03-china-mofcom-ge-ga-sb-export-ban-us).

The National Assembly of Vietnam passed the Law on Data (Luật Dữ liệu), No. 60/2024/QH15, on 30 November 2024; it enters into force on 1 July 2025. The Law is Vietnam's first comprehensive horizontal data-governance statute, extending regulation beyond personal data (already covered by Decree 13/2023/ND-CP) to all digital data — public, private, and sectoral. It introduces statutory categories of "important data" (dữ liệu quan trọng) and "core data" (dữ liệu cốt lõi) tied to national-defence and national-security review for cross-border transfer, and establishes the National Data Centre under the Ministry of Public Security plus a statutory data-broker / data-services licensing framework.

Vietnam's 15th National Assembly adopted Law No. 54/2024/QH15 on Geology and Minerals on 29 November 2024 (446 of 448 votes), promulgated by Presidential Order on 20 December 2024 and effective 1 July 2025 (Articles 110.2 and 110.3 effective earlier on 15 January 2025). The law replaces the 2010 Mineral Law and introduces a four-group mineral classification, with Group I — covering metallic minerals (including rare earths), energy minerals, precious/semi-precious stones, and industrial minerals — placed under state-controlled licensing, national master-plan approval by the Prime Minister, and a "supply-the-domestic-industrial-ecosystem" priority that operates as a de-facto export curb on raw and minimally-processed strategic minerals. Vietnam holds the world's second-largest rare-earth reserves after China, making the new statute a foundational instrument for a state-controlled midstream gateway in non-China REE supply.

Regulation (EU) 2024/3015 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 November 2024 establishes the first EU-wide binding prohibition on placing, making available on, or exporting from the EU single market any products made with forced labour at any stage of production, manufacture, harvest, extraction or processing. The regulation is cross-sector and horizontal — no sectoral exemptions apply. It entered into force on 13 December 2024, with a phased implementation schedule; procedural and institutional framework provisions apply from 13 December 2024, while full operational application begins on 14 December 2027. The regulation empowers national competent authorities (and the Commission for state-imposed forced-labour cases involving third countries) to investigate, require withdrawal, and order destruction of non-compliant goods, and establishes a Commission-maintained publicly accessible database of high-risk geographic areas, sectors, and products.

By Government Decision No. 1533 of 27 November 2024 (published in the Official Monitor No. 1232 of 9 December 2024), the Government of Romania adopted the National Strategy for the Defence Industry 2024-2030. The strategy commits Romania to a 2.5%-of-GDP defence budget through 2030 with 35% earmarked for equipment procurement, sets ten sectoral objectives spanning powders/explosives, munitions, armoured vehicles, naval and aeronautical production, military C4I/cybersecurity, SME advancement, R&D, and a regulatory framework for autonomous combat vehicles and loitering munitions, and invokes Article 346 TFEU to anchor industrial-participation cooperation between foreign primes and national industry. A flagship target is domestic production of two million artillery projectiles per year by 2030.

Yacimientos de Litio Bolivianos (YLB), Bolivia's state lithium SOE, signed a USD 1.030bn services contract on 26 November 2024 with Hong Kong CBC Investment Ltd. (a CATL-CMOC-BRUNP consortium) to build and operate two direct-lithium-extraction (DLE) plants on the Salar de Uyuni — one rated at 10,000 t/yr and one at 25,000 t/yr lithium carbonate, for combined 35,000 t/yr nameplate capacity. Bolivia retains a 51% sovereign share through YLB; CBC supplies financing, EDL technology and offtake. The contract was transmitted to the Asamblea Legislativa Plurinacional and the Chamber of Deputies' Plural Economy, Production and Industry Commission approved it by majority in mid-2025 (Bill No. 197/2024-2025); full plenary ratification remained pending as of May 2026, with a parallel Colcha K mixed-court suspension order on FPIC (free, prior and informed consent) grounds.

The US Bureau of Industry and Security amended the Export Administration Regulations to impose a new "Regional Stability – Pakistan" (RS-PAK) licence requirement on exports, reexports, and in-country transfers to Pakistan of items classified under six previously-uncontrolled-for-Pakistan ECCNs: 1B999, 2A992, 2B999 (excluding 2B999.h.2), 3A992, 3A999, and 6A996. The covered items — process-control equipment, high-pressure piping and valves, oscilloscopes, electronic test equipment, magnetometers, and related dual-use industrial gear — are associated with unsafeguarded nuclear and ballistic-missile end-uses. Licence applications are reviewed case-by-case to assess diversion risk to Pakistan's nuclear weapons or ballistic missile programmes, and to entities already on the Entity List or front companies acting on their behalf. Issued as a final rule under ECRA §1762(a) (no notice-and-comment); originally effective 25 November 2024 with the corresponding amendatory instructions, with the substantive licence requirement effective 26 December 2024 (post C1-2024-27648 correction published 29 November 2024).

Mongolia's State Great Hural adopted a comprehensive package of amendments to the 2009 Nuclear Energy Law on 21 November 2024 (approved by 68.1% of votes), restructuring the country's uranium-sector governance across three principal axes. The amendments introduce a dynamic three-tier uranium royalty framework — 5% basic (AMNAT) + 5% special + 0–9% price-linked incremental royalty, yielding approximately 14–19% aggregate — that replaces a flat-rate structure with a price-elastic mechanism designed to capture uranium supercycle upside for the Mongolian state. The law also prohibits export of radioactive minerals in raw ore form (mandatory domestic processing to at least yellowcake/U₃O₈ before export), prohibits import, transit, and disposal of foreign spent nuclear fuel in Mongolia, and provides the parliamentary legal underpinning for the ~USD 1.6 billion Orano (France)– Mongolia state investment agreement on the Zuuvch-Ovoo in-situ-leach uranium deposit (Dornogovi province), signed October 2024, targeting first production in 2028 with eventual ramp-up to ~2,500 t/yr uranium output.

Vietnam's 15th National Assembly passed Law 44/2024/QH15 on 21 November 2024, comprehensively amending the 2016 Law on Pharmacy. The law liberalises foreign-invested enterprise (FIE) rights — permitting FIEs to wholesale self-imported drugs and APIs and to operate pharmacy chains for the first time — while introducing a special investment-incentive tier for pharma projects capitalised at ≥ VND 3,000 billion (≈ USD 120m) with ≥ VND 1,000 billion disbursed within three years. Online retail of non-prescription drugs is formally legalised as a distinct regulated business activity. Most provisions take effect 1 July 2025; selected marketing-authorisation renewal procedures took effect 1 January 2025. Implementing Decree 163/2025/ND-CP, effective 1 July 2025, provides detailed operational guidance.

Government of Romania Decision (Hotărârea de Guvern) nr. 1464 of 21 November 2024, published in Monitorul Oficial Part I no. 1212bis of 3 December 2024, approves Romania's first National Strategy for Non-Energy Mineral Resources for the 2025-2035 period. The strategy is an 11-year programmatic public-policy framework spanning geological research, inventory and evaluation of critical + strategic raw materials, exploitation and advanced processing, environmental restoration of mining areas, superior valorisation of secondary resources from waste dumps and tailings ponds, geothermal water utilisation, and spa-tourism diversification. The strategy serves as Romania's domestic implementation framework under the EU Critical Raw Materials Act (Regulation 2024/1252) and is the parent authority under which Romania submitted the three CRMA Strategic-Project applications approved by the European Commission on 25 March 2025 (Euro Sun Mining gold/copper at Rovina, Salrom salt + lithium, Verde Magnesium magnesium recovery from tailings) totalling approximately €615m of investment.

Décret n° 2024/05251/PM, signed on 19 November 2024 by the Cameroonian Prime Minister, establishes the legal framework governing the possession, marketing, export, import, and transit of mineral substances in Cameroon. The decree operationalises the trade-flow control architecture introduced by the headline Loi n°2023/014 portant Code Minier (December 2023), giving effect to SONAMINES's statutory monopoly over the purchase and commercialisation of strategic minerals including gold, diamonds, cobalt, nickel, and manganese. It is one of eight implementing decrees signed 18–19 November 2024 that together constitute the full operational legal framework under the 2023 Code Minier.

Council Regulation (EU) 2024/2897 of 18 November 2024 amends Regulation (EU) 2023/1529 (restrictive measures over Iran's military support to Russia's war against Ukraine and to armed groups in the Middle East and Red Sea region). It replaces Annex II with an expanded list of goods and technology whose sale, supply or export to Iran is prohibited where they could enable UAV or missile production, across ten technology categories, and adds Article 2a, a prohibition on transactions with the ports listed in Annex IV (Amirabad and Anzali). It entered into force on publication in the Official Journal.

Government of Russia Resolution No. 1544, signed by Prime Minister Mishustin on 14 November 2024 and published 15 November 2024, amends Resolution No. 313 of 9 March 2022 (the framework counter-sanctions list of goods restricted for export to "unfriendly" jurisdictions) by adding HS code 2844 20 — uranium enriched in U-235 and its compounds — to Annex 2. The amendment imposes a temporary export ban on enriched uranium to the United States and to legal entities incorporated in US jurisdiction, in force from 16 November 2024 through 31 December 2025. Exports are permitted only under one-off licences issued by the Russian Federal Service for Technical and Export Control (FSTEC). The measure is an explicit tit-for-tat response to the US Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act (Public Law 118-50, 13 May 2024).

At the 21st Kimberley Process Plenary in Dubai on November 15, 2024, KP participants unanimously voted to lift the rough diamond export embargo on the Central African Republic, reinstating CAR as a full KP member under enhanced vigilance conditions. The embargo had been in place since 2013 following a violent coup and evidence of rebel financing through diamond mining; it was the last remaining KP export restriction in force globally. The decision restores CAR's access to legal international diamond trade channels after an 11-year interruption, directly affecting diamond importers in the UAE, India, Belgium, and Hong Kong who must now treat CAR-origin rough diamonds as compliant-origin under KP certification.

South Korea's Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MOTIE), in coordination with the Ministry of Strategy and Finance, announced on 15 November 2024 amendments to the Foreign Exchange Transactions Act and the Industrial Technology Protection Act introducing a notification + review regime for outbound investments by Korean firms in advanced semiconductor manufacturing or critical-component production in "strategic concern" jurisdictions, principally China. The regulation, effective 1 April 2025, requires Korean firms whose technology is designated as a "national core technology" (NCT) to obtain MOTIE approval before establishing or expanding overseas manufacturing facilities using that technology. The list includes Samsung's HBM, SK Hynix's DRAM/NAND advanced-node processes, and certain silicon-wafer technologies.

On 14 November 2024 in Port Moresby, the Papua New Guinea Mineral Resources Authority (MRA) signed a five-year Memorandum of Understanding (2025–2030) with the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Mineral Resources of the China Geological Survey (CGS), renewing a geoscience cooperation framework first established in a 2012 MoU. The agreement covers joint geochemical mapping, soil and rock sampling, remote-sensing surveys across PNG mineral provinces, and a capacity-building programme placing PNG geoscientists at Chinese universities for postgraduate degrees. At a time when the US, Australia and Japan are competing for upstream critical-minerals influence across the Pacific under the Quad and Lobito Corridor architectures, the MoU directs PNG's geological-survey knowledge production into Chinese state-affiliated channels, potentially biasing downstream mineral-rights allocation toward CGS-aligned exploration entities.

President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. signed Republic Act No. 12066 — the CREATE MORE Act ("Corporate Recovery and Tax Incentives for Enterprises to Maximize Opportunities for Reinvigorating the Economy") — on 11 November 2024, with the law taking effect on 28 November 2024. RA 12066 amends the 2021 CREATE Act (RA 11534) to extend the maximum tax-incentive availment for Registered Business Enterprises from 17 to 27 years, cuts the corporate income tax to 20% for RBEs under the Enhanced Deductions Regime (vs the standard 25% / SCIT 5%), grants a 100% additional power-expense deduction (raised from 50%) for manufacturers, expands VAT zero-rating and import VAT-exemption for export-oriented enterprises, raises the IPA approval threshold from PHP 1bn to PHP 15bn, and institutionalises work-from-home for ecozone/freeport RBEs.

In two consecutive sectoral notifications, Pakistan's Special Technology Zones Authority (STZA) — a federal body under the Cabinet Division — formally declared two additional Special Technology Zones. The Khanpur Industrial Project (Mumrial, Khanpur, District Haripur, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa; ~197 acres / 199,174 sq ft of existing and proposed infrastructure) was notified on 12 September 2024. The LEOS Technology Zone (Lehtrar Road, Nilore, Islamabad; 19.23 acres / 225,562 sq ft) was notified on 8 November 2024. Both zones operate under the Special Technology Zones Authority Act, 2021 incentive regime, which provides Zone Enterprises and Zone Developers a 10-year exemption from income tax, customs duty on capital-goods imports, and sales tax (under the Customs Act 1969, Income Tax Ordinance 2001 and Sales Tax Act 1990), together with eligibility for Special Forex Accounts under State Bank of Pakistan regulations (no requirement to convert USD inflows to PKR). The umbrella incentive window for the STZA regime runs until 30 June 2035, with each zone enterprise's 10-year clock starting from the date the zone developer certifies commercial operation.

Singapore enacted the Multinational Enterprise (Minimum Tax) Act 2024 (Act No. 36 of 2024), which received Presidential assent on 8 November 2024 after passing Parliament on 15 October 2024, implementing OECD/G20 GloBE Pillar Two rules for fiscal years beginning on or after 1 January 2025. The Act introduces a 15% Income Inclusion Rule (IIR) and a Qualified Domestic Minimum Top-up Tax (DTT / QDMTT) for MNE groups with consolidated annual revenue ≥ EUR 750 million; the Undertaxed Profits Rule (UTPR) is deliberately deferred to a subsequent amendment cycle. Singapore's adoption is structurally significant as the first major low-corporate-tax-rate Asia-Pacific financial hub to conform to the 15% floor, signalling that traditional 17%-rate holding-company and treasury-centre structures are no longer a stable tax-arbitrage substrate.

Tanzania's Parliament passed the Written Laws (Miscellaneous Amendments) (No. 4) Act, 2024 (Bill No. 15 of 2024, published in the Special Gazette of the United Republic of Tanzania No. 34 Vol. 105 on 5 November 2024), which amends eight statutes including the Mining Act, Cap. 123. The mining-related provisions: (i) empower the Minister for Minerals, on recommendation from the Geological Survey of Tanzania (GST), to declare specific minerals as "critical" (essential to national economic, geopolitical, technology, or industrial use with limited or threatened supply) or "strategic" (mineral resources with diplomatic or defence importance) — the first Tanzanian statutory authority to do so; (ii) raise the minimum capital investment for a Mining Licence from USD 100,000 to USD 5,000,000 (a 50× hike pricing out junior explorers); (iii) authorise gemstone export following government-organised mineral auctions or international gem fairs while reaffirming the general beneficiation-in-Tanzania requirement on raw minerals and concentrates; (iv) require GST verification of mineral data on samples exported by mineral right holders; and (v) impose penalties for inaccurate or false mineral-data submissions. The Act establishes the gateway statutory authority for any future Tanzania critical- mineral export-control or stockpiling regime.

Türkiye's Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources (ETKB) published the YEKA GES-2024 tender specification in Resmî Gazete No. 32712 on 4 November 2024, allocating 800 MW of utility-scale solar PV capacity across six Renewable Energy Resource Areas (Bor/Niğde, Hisarcık/Kütahya, Tefenni/Burdur, Kayseri, Kahramanmaraş, Hilvan/Şanlıurfa) with 49-year land-use rights and 15-year USD-denominated power-purchase agreements through EÜAŞ. The auction concluded in January 2025 at a record-low ceiling price of USD 3.25 c/kWh, re-activating the YEKA pipeline after a multi-year pause and signalling a ~2 GW/year cadence through 2035 to meet the National Energy Plan target of 52.9 GW installed solar capacity by 2035. The specification includes local-content scoring and domestic-manufacturing commitments that shape foreign EPC and module-supplier access to the Turkish utility-scale solar market.