Critical minerals: which markets carry the most exposure

What counts as a critical mineral here

The Invest Global sector page defines the sector this way: "Minerals with concentrated supply and high strategic value for batteries, magnets, semiconductors and defence, including lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite, manganese, rare earths, tungsten and antimony." Production figures come from the US Geological Survey Mineral Commodity Summaries.

How this relates to mining

The dataset also scores a separate Mining and Metals sector. The mining sector page defines its scope this way: "Extraction and primary processing of base metals, precious metals, iron ore, coal and industrial minerals, and the smelting and refining that follow." The sector pages for mining and critical minerals set out each formula.

Where exposure is highest

The model scores 197 countries. The top five:

Australia leads at 97 out of 100, and Chile is fifth at 95 out of 100. The five scores are close, and the chart shows them side by side.

How the score is built

The model publishes its method. The summary reads: "Each score is a weighted average of percentile ranks. For every indicator, a country's latest observation (not older than 2014) is ranked against all other countries with data (mid-rank percentile, 0 to 1). Where a lower raw value signals more headroom (for example electricity access), the rank is inverted. The weighted average of the available percentiles is scaled to 0 to 100. A cell is published only if indicators holding at least 60 percent of the weight are available; otherwise the country is omitted for that sector." For the critical minerals sector, the inputs are: Combined world mine output share across tracked critical minerals (sum of percent shares) (weight 30%); Tracked critical minerals where the country produces 2 percent or more of world output (weight 25%); Combined world reserve share across tracked critical minerals (sum of percent shares) (weight 25%); Mineral rents (weight 20%).

On interpretation, the model states: "The score describes how large and relevant a sector is in a country's economy and opportunity set, relative to other countries. It is not a measure of attractiveness, return or risk, and it is not investment advice."

How concentrated the supply is

The US Geological Survey data in the dataset gives the share of world mine output held by the largest producer of each mineral listed in the table:

For lithium, the largest producer is Australia with 37.3%. For cobalt, Democratic Republic of the Congo supplies 74.8%. For nickel, Indonesia holds 62.3%. For graphite, rare earths and tungsten, China leads with 81.9%, 71.1% and 81.7% respectively. For antimony, the largest producer holds 33.6%.

The shares differ widely by mineral, from 33.6% for antimony to 81.9% for graphite.

Output across the whole basket

One of the model's inputs adds up a country's share of world mine output across the tracked minerals. The note attached to the figure reads: "Sum of the country's percent shares of 2024 world mine production across the tracked USGS critical minerals." The five largest sums are:

China stands at 450.5 percentage points, ahead of Russia at 134.9 percentage points. The measure is a sum of percentage shares across minerals.

Foreign investment rules

The OECD publishes a restrictiveness index for foreign direct investment. The OECD page says the index "measures statutory restrictions on foreign direct investment in 22 economic sectors across 100+ countries", and it covers four types of restriction: foreign equity limits, screening and approval mechanisms, restrictions on key foreign personnel, and other restrictions faced by foreign investors, such as restrictions on the acquisition of land and real estate for business purposes. It covers 105 countries in the Invest Global dataset, and the median reading is 0.078. The OECD notes: "The information in the database is based on official legal sources." The critical minerals sector page lists the full scores and the formula behind each.