Bolivia candidate vows to scrap China, Russia lithium offers
By Jos� Arturo C�rdenas and Gonzalo TORRICO
La Paz (AFP) Aug 25, 2025
Bolivian right-wing presidential hopeful Jorge Quiroga on Monday vowed to scrap billion-dollar lithium extraction offers struck by the outgoing authorities with Russia and China if elected chief.
“We do not acknowledge (outgoing President Luis) Arce’s contracts… Let’s cease them, they will not be accepted,” the US-educated Quiroga, who has vowed a significant shake-up in Bolivia’s alliances if elected president in October, instructed AFP in an interview.
Quiroga got here second within the first spherical of Bolivia’s August 17 presidential election with 26.7 p.c, behind center-right senator Rodrigo Paz on 32 p.c.
The Motion In direction of Socialism (MAS), in energy since 2006, suffered a historic rout, with voters punishing the celebration based by iconic ex-president Evo Morales over a deep financial disaster.
Quiroga and Paz now face a second-round duel for the presidency on October 19.
The destiny of Bolivia’s lithium deposits — among the many world’s largest of the metallic utilized in smartphone and electrical car batteries — is a scorching subject within the marketing campaign.
The so-called Lithium Triangle, spanning components of Bolivia, Chile and Argentina, is house to 60 p.c of the world’s lithium reserves, based on the US Geological Survey.
However within the case of Bolivia, almost all of it’s nonetheless trapped underground, at an altitude of three,600 meters (12,000 ft) within the huge Salar de Uyuni salt flat, one of many nation’s prime vacationer points of interest.
In 2023 and 2024 Arce’s authorities signed offers with Russia’s Uranium One and China’s CBC, a subsidiary of battery producer CATL, to extract lithium from the salt pan.
Value a mixed $2 billion, the offers have been supposed to assist Bolivia catch up within the race to mine the mineral.
However they have been blocked in Congress by infighting within the ruling celebration.
Indigenous teams in the meantime went to court docket to have them scrapped on environmental grounds.
Quiroga claimed Uranium One and CATL have been chosen “behind the again” of native authorities and mentioned he would suggest a brand new regulation on mineral deposits that precluded “favoritism.”
– From gasoline to lithium –
Bolivia loved over a decade of sturdy development underneath Morales (2006-2019), who nationalized the gasoline sector and ploughed the proceeds into anti-poverty packages.
However underinvestment in exploration triggered gasoline revenues to implode, eroding the federal government’s overseas forex reserves and resulting in acute shortages of imported gasoline, widely-used {dollars} and different fundamentals.
Inflation rose to 24.8 p.c year-on-year in July, its highest degree since a minimum of 2008, inflicting voters to abandon the left in droves.
Quiroga, who served briefly as president within the early 2000s, has pledged a radical overhaul of Bolivia’s big-state financial mannequin if elected, together with steep spending cuts.
His challenger Paz, who has campaigned as a reasonable, on Monday dominated out strict austerity measures to rescue the nation from the brink of chapter.
“There might be a stabilization course of, we’re not calling it an adjustment,” the 57-year-old senator instructed AFP.
He nonetheless revealed he would minimize $1.2 billion in annual gasoline subsidies — a significant drain on the general public purse — and save one other $1.3 billion in unspecified “superfluous spending.”
Paz added that he would create tax incentives to get Bolivians to financial institution any {dollars} hidden underneath their mattress however wouldn’t initially search a global bailout, as proposed by Quiroga.
“Individuals perceive that we now have to get our home so as first,” mentioned Paz, whose father Jaime Paz Zamora led Bolivia from 1989 to 1993.
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