Hopeful that discussions with China on rare earths will yield positive outcome: Commerce Secretary

 Commerce Secretary Sunil Barthwal. Photo credit: X/@IndinNederlands

The Indian government is engaged with China commercially as well as diplomatically to help ease the plight of importers, especially the automobile sector, that are dependent on rare earth metals and magnets, Commerce Secretary Sunil Barthwal said on Monday (June 16, 2025). He said he was “hopeful” that these discussions would yield a positive result.

In addition, he said that the Ministry of Commerce and Industry was going to hold a meeting this week with trade and shipping stakeholders to understand what issues they are facing due to the Israel-Iran conflict.

“Since China’s actions on rare earth metals and magnets are impacting the auto sector more, we are engaged with both the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) and Automotive Component Manufacturers Association (ACMA),” Mr. Barthwal said at a press briefing. “We are facilitating them to have discussions with their counterparts in China.” 

“At the diplomatic level, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) and officials from the Department of Commerce have spoken to the ambassador over there,” he added. “The MEA is engaged with China and both diplomatic as well as commercial discussion are going on and we are making all the efforts to see that these essential items of imports can come to India.”

Mr. Barthwal further said that China seems to have introduced a regime where licenses would be required to import rare earth metals and magnets from that country, and that the Indian government was facilitating importers and automobile makers in this regard. 

“These diplomatic and commercial communications should yield a positive result,” he said. 

On the Israel-Iran conflict, the Commerce Secretary said that the overall impact on India’s trade would depend on how the situation unfolds there, but added that India was tracking the developments.  

“We are watching the situation and we are also calling a meeting very shortly, this week itself, of all the shipping lines, the container organisations, and the concerned departments and stakeholders to understand from them what are the kinds of issues they are facing and how we can sort it out,” he said.

The Hindu had last week reported that an escalation of the Israel-Iran conflict and the resultant closure of the Strait of Hormuz would add 15-20 days to India’s shipping times, and 40-50% to shipping costs.