On Tuesday, July 28, SAFE’s Center for Critical Minerals Strategy hosted a webinar on the release of its newest report, Critical Moves: Crowding in Capital to Finance Minerals Supply Chains.
The United States and its partners have launched several overlapping international critical minerals initiatives aimed at diversifying and securing the supply chains of critical minerals that are necessary to meet economic and national security demands. These include the Critical Minerals Resilience and Production Alliance, the Conference on Critical Minerals and Materials, the Minerals Security Project (MSP), and its successor, the Forum on Resource and Strategic Engagement (FORGE), and others.
Public finance institutions have been increasingly implicated as the solution to the critical minerals financing shortfall, but there are significant structural and knowledge gaps that limit their abilities to answer this call to action.
1) A disconnect between what policymakers and political officials expect institutions to do and what legal authorities these institutions actually have.
2) A divergence between what institutions are empowered to do on paper and how they operate in practice, especially in the face of risk.
3) A knowledge gap between the private and public sectors on engagement with public finance institutions.
The webinar featured three focus sessions with experts from the U.S. government, foreign finance institutions, and private sector leaders:
- 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
