The economy of Paraguay is a market economy that is highly dependent on agriculture products. In recent years, Paraguay's economy has grown as a result of increased agricultural exports, especially soybeans. Paraguay has the economic advantages of a young population and vast hydroelectric power. Its disadvantages include the few available mineral resources, and political instability. The government welcomes foreign investment.
The economy of Bolivia is the 95th-largest in the world in nominal terms and the 87th-largest in purchasing power parity. Bolivia is classified by the World Bank to be a lower middle income country. With a Human Development Index of 0.703, it is ranked 114th. Driven largely by its natural resources, Bolivia has become a region leader in measures of economic growth, fiscal stability and foreign reserves, although it remains a historically poor country. The Bolivian economy has had a historic single-commodity focus. From silver to tin to coca, Bolivia has enjoyed only occasional periods of economic diversification. Political instability and difficult topography have constrained efforts to modernize the agricultural sector. Similarly, relatively low population growth coupled with low life expectancy has kept the labor supply in flux and prevented industries from flourishing. Rampant inflation and corruption previously created development challenges, but in the early twenty-first century the fundamentals of its economy showed unexpected improvement, leading Moody's Investors Service to upgrade Bolivia's economic rating in 2010 from B2 to B1. The mining industry, especially the extraction of natural gas and zinc, currently dominates Bolivia's export economy.
The Bolivian Gas War or Bolivian gas conflict was a social confrontation in Bolivia reaching its peak in 2003, centering on the exploitation of the country's vast natural gas reserves. The expression can be extended to refer to the general conflict in Bolivia over the exploitation of gas resources, thus including the 2005 protests and the election of Evo Morales as president. Before these protests, Bolivia had seen a series of similar earlier protests during the Cochabamba protests of 2000, which were against the privatization of the municipal water supply.
The economy of Chile has shifted substantially over time from the heterogeneous economies of the diverse indigenous peoples to an early husbandry-oriented economy and finally to one of raw material export and a large service sector. Chile's recent economic history has been the focus of an extensive debate, as it pioneered neoliberal economic policies.
Mining in Afghanistan was controlled by the Ministry of Mines and Petroleum, prior to the August 15th 2021 takeover by the Taliban. It is headquartered in Kabul with regional offices in other parts of the country. Afghanistan has over 1,400 mineral fields, containing barite, chromite, coal, copper, gold, iron ore, lead, natural gas, petroleum, precious and semi-precious stones, salt, sulfur, lithium, talc, and zinc, among many other minerals. Gemstones include high-quality emeralds, lapis lazuli, red garnet and ruby. According to a joint study by The Pentagon and the United States Geological Survey, Afghanistan has an estimated US$1 trillion of untapped minerals.
The Mexican miracle is a term used to refer to the country's inward-looking development strategy that produced sustained economic growth. It is considered to be a golden age in Mexico's economy in which the Mexican economy grew 6.8% each year. It was a stabilizing economic plan which caused an average growth of 6.8% and industrial production to increase by 8% with inflation staying at only 2.5%. Beginning roughly in the 1940s, the Mexican government would begin to roll out the economic plan that they would call "the Mexican miracle," which would spark an economic boom beginning in 1954 spanning some 15 years and would last until 1970. In Mexico, the Spanish economic term used is "Desarrollo estabilizador" or "Stabilizing Development."
The mining sector in Chile is one of the pillars of Chilean economy and copper exports alone stands for more than one third of government income. Most mining in Chile is concentrated to the Norte Grande region spanning most of the Atacama Desert. Mining products of Chile includes copper, gold, silver, molybdenum, iron and coal. Chile was, in 2019, the world's largest producer of copper, iodine and rhenium, the second largest producer of lithium and molybdenum, the sixth largest producer of silver, the seventh largest producer of salt, the eighth largest producer of potash, the thirteenth producer of sulfur and the thirteenth producer of iron ore in the world. In the production of gold, between 2006 and 2017, the country produced annual quantities ranging from 35.9 tons in 2017 to 51.3 tons in 2013.
Mining in Bolivia has been a dominant feature of the Bolivian economy as well as Bolivian politics since 1557. Colonial era silver mining in Bolivia, particularly in Potosí, played a critical role in the Spanish Empire and the global economy. Tin mining supplanted silver by the twentieth century and the central element of Bolivian mining, and wealthy tin barons played an important role in national politics until they were marginalized by the industry's nationalization into the Bolivian Mining Corporation that followed the 1952 revolution. Bolivian miners played a critical part to the country's organized labor movement from the 1940s to the 1980s.
Natural gas in Bolivia is one of the nation's main energy sources and export products. Bolivia's proved natural gas reserves are estimated to be 10.7 (TCF). Most of these reserves are located in the eastern region of the country. The major export pipelines in Bolivia transport the gas to Argentina and Brazil.
Canadian mining in Latin America and the Caribbean began in the late 20th century. Latin America and the Caribbean's vast resources give the region great geopolitical importance, attracting foreign interest for centuries. The Canadian mining industry is the largest in the world, operating as an important driver for global capital accumulation. Up to 70% of all mining in Latin America involves a Canadian transnational corporation. From the colonial race of European empires, to the multinationals of today's neoliberal capitalist world, this region continues to draw interest. Canada's involvement in Latin America increased dramatically since 1989 with several landmark negotiations and agreements. From 1989 to 2001, of the top 20 mineral exploration investors in Latin America, seven were Canadian companies. By 2009, the Canadian larger-company mineral exploration market in this region was valued at US$1.7 billion.
Material criticality is the determination of which materials that flow through an industry or economy are most important to the production process. It is a sub-category within the field of material flow analysis (MFA), which is a method to quantitatively analyze the flows of materials used for industrial production in an industry or economy. MFA is a useful tool to assess what impacts materials used in the industrial process have and how efficiently a given process uses them.
Greenbushes mine is an open-pit lithium mining operation located south of the town of Greenbushes, Western Australia. It is the world's largest hard-rock lithium mine, producing approximately 1.95 million tonnes of lithium spodumene annually. The mine is 250 kilometres south of Perth and 90 kilometres southeast of the port of Bunbury.
Latin America as a region has multiple nation-states, with varying levels of economic complexity. The Latin American economy is an export-based economy consisting of individual countries in the geographical regions of North America, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. The socioeconomic patterns of what is now called Latin America were set in the colonial era when the region was controlled by the Spanish and Portuguese empires. Up until independence in the early nineteenth century, colonial Latin American regional economies thrived and worked things out. Many parts of the region had favorable factor endowments of deposits of precious metals, mainly silver, or tropical climatic conditions and locations near coasts that allowed for the development of cane sugar plantations. In the nineteenth century following independence, many economies of Latin America declined. In the late nineteenth century, much of Latin America was integrated into the world economy as an exporter of commodities. Foreign capital investment, construction of infrastructure, such as railroads, growth in the labor sector with immigration from abroad, strengthening of institutions, and expansion of education aided industrial growth and economic expansion. A number of regions have thriving economies, but "poverty and inequality have been deeply rooted in Latin American societies since the early colonial era."
Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited (CATL) is a Chinese battery manufacturer and technology company founded in 2011 that specializes in the manufacturing of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles and energy storage systems, as well as battery management systems (BMS). The company is the biggest EV and energy storage battery manufacturer in the world, with a global market share of around 37% and 40% respectively in 2023. The company is headquartered in the city of Ningde in China's Fujian province.
Australia has one of the biggest lithium reserves and is the biggest producer of lithium by weight, with most of its production coming from mines in Western Australia. Most Australian lithium is produced from hard-rock spodumene, in contrast to other major producers like Argentina, Chile and China, which produce it mainly from salt lakes.
The following is a list of reactions to the 2019 Bolivian political crisis.
The Lithium Triangle is a region of the Andes that is rich in lithium reserves, encompassed by the borders of Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile. The lithium in the triangle is concentrated in various salt pans that exist along the Atacama Desert and neighboring arid areas. The largest areas three main salt pans that define its vertices are the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia, Salar de Atacama in Chile, and Salar del Hombre Muerto in Argentina. Of these, the core of Salar de Atacama in Chile has the highest concentration of lithium among all world's brine sources.
China produced more than 15 billion units of lithium-ion batteries in 2019, which accounts for 73% of the world's 316 gigawatt-hours capacity. China is a significant producer of lithium batteries and electric vehicles, supported by government policies. Lithium-ion batteries produced in China are primarily exported to Hong Kong, the United States, Germany, Korea, and Vietnam. The electric vehicle industry significantly drives the demand for lithium-ion batteries due to their high energy density relative to their weight. In the decade since 2008, the production of lithium batteries has tripled.
Energy Exploration Technologies, Inc. is an American technology company. Founded in 2018 by Teague Egan, it is based out of San Juan, Puerto Rico and has offices and laboratory facilities in Austin, Texas, and operations in the South American Lithium Triangle.
