MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico’s government has invited Chilean president-elect Gabriel Boric to visit the country, with lithium mining likely to feature on the bilateral agenda going forward, Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said on Thursday.
Ebrard spoke in a video news conference from Chile after meeting with Boric, a leftist who won election last month as Chile’s youngest-ever democratically elected president.
When asked if the two had discussed lithium mining during talks in Chile, Ebrard said the topic did not come up, but was likely to do so in future as an area of common agreement.
“The business of lithium is sure to be one of the priorities on the shared agenda between Chile and Mexico,” he said.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a leftist resource nationalist, is seeking to reserve lithium extraction for the government and bar private developers from future concessions.
(Reporting by Raul Cortes; Writing by Daina Beth Solomon; Editing by Dave Graham)
