India Courts Uzbekistan for Rare Earths as It Looks Beyond China

India's search for rare-earth and critical-mineral supply beyond China now runs through three nodes: Myanmar, Siberia, and Uzbekistan. The latest stop says more about the shape of New Delhi's diversification strategy than about any single mine.

On or around August 3, 2026, Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar hosted his Uzbek counterpart Bakhtiyor Saidov in New Delhi for a four-day visit, agreeing to expand the strategic partnership into critical minerals, mining, and defense. The diplomatic warmth was real; the substantive work was supply chain.

Rare earths are the seventeen metallic elements that make permanent magnets possible. Those magnets sit inside the motors of electric vehicles, the generators of wind turbines, the guidance systems of missiles, and the speakers of every smartphone. China dominates global rare-earth refining and produces roughly 90 percent of the world's high-performance rare-earth magnets, a concentration that has made export controls a recurring instrument of trade policy. During a 2010 territorial dispute with Japan over the Senkaku Islands, China was accused of restricting rare-earth exports to Japan — a move critics pointed to as evidence of its willingness to use dominance over mineral supply chains as leverage. China has since extended export controls to adjacent materials including gallium and germanium. "Critical minerals" widens the basket to lithium, cobalt, copper, and other inputs that the energy transition treats as non-substitutable.

India imports rare earths but has limited domestic primary production. To reduce that exposure, New Delhi has been working a portfolio of foreign sources, each with a different rationale.

The first node is Myanmar, which sits on a meaningful share of the world's heavy rare earths, the scarcer subset that includes dysprosium and terbium and is essential for high-temperature magnets. State miner IREL has been pursuing samples and project access there, building on relationships that predate the current push. The second node opened in June 2026, when India sought rare-earth samples from a deposit in Siberia owned by Rosneft, the Russian state-controlled oil company. That gives India a relationship with a sanctioned, China-adjacent supplier; politically complicated, well-stocked.

Uzbekistan is now the third. Saidov framed the mining pitch directly: India and Uzbekistan will take the partnership "into mining". The country's mineral inventory is lighter than its Central Asian neighbors on rare earths specifically, but the geology for copper, uranium, and other critical minerals is well-mapped from the Soviet era, and the political distance from Beijing makes Tashkent an easy partner.

The New Delhi ask is cooperation intent, not a signed deal. Trade Minister Piyush Goyal invited Uzbek businesses to expand through co-investment, co-manufacturing, and innovation. A possible India-Uzbekistan free trade agreement was raised as worth exploring. Indian President Droupadi Murmu, meeting Saidov separately, cited shared heritage and "strong potential" in rare-earth minerals and strategic sectors. No mineral offtake, no project list, no timeline for first tonnes.

Bilateral India-Uzbekistan trade runs around $1.5 billion today. Both governments have publicly targeted roughly doubling that within three years, with the Uzbek side separately floating a $2 billion near-term goal. That is a small number in the context of India's broader trade flows. The textile complementarity, with Uzbek cotton feeding Indian manufacturing, gives both governments a lower-stakes track to keep running while the minerals conversations mature.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's state visit to Uzbekistan is in preparation, per Saidov's framing of the next step after the ministerial meeting. That visit, when it lands, is the most plausible venue for any signed memorandum of understanding or specific project naming.

None of the three legs can substitute Chinese supply on its own. Myanmar is geographically close but politically volatile; Siberia is sanctioned and tied to Moscow; Uzbekistan is friendly and willing, but light on proven rare-earth reserves. The portfolio gives New Delhi a seat at the negotiating table when licensing, prices, or export controls move.