SAFE’s Center for Critical Minerals Strategy’s report, Critical Moves: Crowding in Capital to Finance Minerals Supply Chains, warns that the West’s ability to build secure, diversified critical minerals supply chains now hinges less on where minerals are found, than on whether governments can mobilize capital fast enough to develop them.
The report concludes that the core constraint is not geological scarcity but a persistent financing gap. It examines the export credit agencies, development finance institutions, national development banks, and government-backed funds across the G7, as well as the European Union, Australia, and South Korea, that governments are counting on to close the gap.
The report finds three main barriers that slow public finance deployment:
- A mandate mismatch. Many export credit agencies and development finance institutions were built to promote exports, development, or commercial returns — not resource security — and often lack clear authority for equity investment, early-stage support, or higher-risk jurisdictions.
- A gap between authority and practice. Even where institutions have the right tools like loans, guarantees, insurance, equity, and offtake support, conservative internal processes and risk assessment often limit how much of that authority gets used, particularly for early-stage mining and novel processing technologies.
- A coordination gap. Project developers often cannot determine which institutions can support a given project or how they can co-finance it, while public institutions lack visibility into investable projects. Duplicative due diligence and disconnected funding channels mean projects can lose months or years to process alone.
In the meanwhile, between 2001 and 2023, Chinese state and state-directed entities deployed roughly $98 billion in financing to overseas critical minerals projects, helping Chinese firms lock in stakes in strategic assets and long-term access to raw materials, while Beijing has maintained a dominant position in midstream processing and refining. Chinese firms benefit from low- and zero-cost capital, tolerance for long investment horizons, and state support that insulates them from commercial and price risk.
However, the report finds that allied governments hold an advantage China cannot easily replicate: the ability to mobilize private capital by using coordinated public financing to reduce risk rather than replace private investment outright.
Realizing that advantage, the report argues, requires action in three areas.
- Enabling international coordination
- Improving whole-of-government approaches
- Evolving mandates, conditions, and risk tolerances
SAFE Hosts Report Release Webinar
On the same day as the report release, SAFE hosted a webinar with leaders from the U.S. government, foreign finance institutions, and the private sector to discuss key report findings, featuring the following speakers and moderators:
- Asad Akram · Managing Director and Global Co-Head for Critical Minerals · Materials, and Metals, Office of Strategic Capital
- Tom Haslett · Managing Director of Policy for Energy, Critical Minerals, Africa and Middle East Policy · U.S. International Development Finance Corporation
- Reggie Singh · Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy and Critical Minerals · Bureau of Economic, Energy, and Business Affairs, U.S. Department of State
- Sarah Whitten · Senior Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer · Export-Import Bank of the United States
- Julia Beck · Chief Strategy and Impact Officer · UK Export Finance
- Dan Smart · Country Lead, United States and Canada · Export Finance Australia
- Tushar Handiekar · VP & Global Head Structured and Project Finance · Export Development Canada
- Dr. Jan Klasen · First Vice President and Head of the German Raw Material Fund · KfW
- Sylvain Eckert · Partner, Critical Metals · Infravia Capital Partners
- Helaina Matza · Chief Strategic Development Officer · TechMet
- Silvia Gavornikova · Head of Export Credits and Competition Division· The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
- Frank Fannon · Co-Founder & Managing Partner · Orion Critical Minerals Consortium
- Abigail Hunter · Executive Director · SAFE’s Center for Critical Minerals Strategy
- Ayelet Zamek · MINVEST Delegation Coordinator · SAFE’s Center for Critical Minerals Strategy
- Yusuf Khan · Reporter · The Wall Street Journal
