Two years after its creation, LitioMX managed to obtain lithium carbonate, but it is far from being productive

WIRED: Is LitioMX considering public-private partnerships to explore or exploit lithium?

Pablo Taddei: The creation decree is quite clear. There is the possibility of associations as long as the leadership of the State is maintained… We have always been open to listening to different actors, companies, that ask us to come closer. They are evaluated, case by case. So, the possibility is open there, evidently under the guidance of the State.

Litigation with Ganfeng tests the Government of Mexico

In an interview for WIRED en Español, the researcher from the Public Administration Division of the Center for Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE), José Roldán Xopa, explains that Ganfeng Lithium has the upper hand in the litigation it launched before the ICSID due to the decisions of the Government of Mexico.

“What the Government implemented was a measure that can be considered a regulatory expropriation or regulatory takingbecause it changed the rules of the game that were originally in place and from which investors carried out their investment with an expectation of having a benefit from their investment and a return. My first impression is that [Ganfeng Lithium] “He has a good chance of winning it.”

Roldán Xopa says that, if they lose the litigation, the Government of Mexico would have to compensate the Chinese company with a substantial amount of money. “It is not only what they have already spent on the mine, but also the expectation of return that they may have… It would be compensation equivalent to the expectation of return that the investors had.”

LitioMX is directed by a board of directors made up of the heads of different secretariats of the Federal Government: the Ministry of Energy (which chairs the council), the Ministry of Economy, the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit and the Ministry of Public Function. The general director of LitioMX, Pablo Taddei, legally represents the organization and has a voice on the council, but does not vote on decisions.

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In its 2018-2024 Government Management Report LitioMX explains that, although it was created in 2022, it did not have a budget until 2023. This budget was 2 million 179 thousand pesos and was used to pay payroll. Until August 2024, LitioMX claimed to have 5 management positions and 9 temporary worker positions, to whose payroll it would allocate the 14 million 331 thousand pesos that make up its modified annual budget, all received as “fiscal support.”

The organization directed by Pablo Taddei has among its powers decreed by former President López Obrador to administer the resources obtained from the exploration, exploitation and benefit of lithium and its economic value chains, but in its two years of existence it has not generated its own income and Its functions are carried out, until September 2024, from an office provided on loan by the Ministry of Energy.

In the Federation Expenditure Budget for the year 2025, approved by the Chamber of Deputies, a budget was assigned to LitioMX for 12 million 900 thousand pesos, all to specifically cover payroll and other benefits of its 14 workers as contributions to the ISSSTE , vacation bonuses and bonuses.

Asked if this budget is sufficient for LitioMX to carry out all its functions mandated by law, its director, Pablo Taddei, responded: “Yes. The idea, and how LitioMX is conceived from the beginning, is that it remains a very decentralized organization. leanslim, efficient. We conceive it as a kind of start-upthat we remain small, operationally very efficient, flexible, to avoid the vices of large companies. Now, those amounts that you mention actually go to branch 1,000, which is practically salaries. But behind all this effort, which is an effort of the Mexican State, it must be said, we have, for example, the support of some Researchers for Mexico, which is a figure of the CONAHCYT of experts. And then we see all these different branches with SGM, PEMEX, CFE, IMP, and we develop projects. That is why LitioMX’s purely operational budget is that, but the capabilities of what we manage to develop are not limited to that budget.”