World Bank targets $19bn for critical minerals as India eyes $5bn by 2031
The World Bank Group plans to quintuple its support for metals and minerals to $19bn between fiscal 2026 and 2030, up from $3.6bn in the preceding five years. President Ajay Banga announced the target at the annual meetings in Bangkok. It is less a lending programme than a bundle. It covers licensing and geological-data reforms, environmental and social oversight, infrastructure, workforce development and local supply chains, delivered through public finance, private investment and risk guarantees.
The geopolitics are visible in the fine print. The United States, the bank’s largest shareholder, has pressed for more resources for de-risking and enabling infrastructure, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said this should include deep-sea mining. The bank’s own plan, however, takes a precautionary approach to that sector. How that tension between Washington’s supply-security agenda and the bank’s safeguards resolves will decide how much of the $19bn becomes bankable projects. Eight governments (Argentina, Bolivia, Egypt, India, Kazakhstan, Malawi, Mauritania and Zambia) have launched country compacts built around processing and local value rather than raw exports.
India’s place on that list matters. It aims to mobilise $5bn through 2031 across exploration, processing, advanced manufacturing, recycling and skills. Kazakhstan, by comparison, is targeting up to $20bn. The emphasis on the midstream is the relevant signal, because China currently dominates global processing capacity for battery and renewable-energy minerals. India’s binding constraint is often refining capacity and the cost of capital for first-of-a-kind plants rather than ore access. Guarantees and policy support from the bank could narrow that risk premium and draw in private lenders.
The $5bn is a mobilisation target, not committed lending, and it competes for attention within a 20-country pipeline. The bank also cites the Lobito corridor, a rail route built mainly for minerals that increasingly carries agricultural goods. That is a useful model for India: minerals-led logistics can have wider economic uses. The test before 2031 is whether the compact converts into financed processing and manufacturing assets.
Hitachi Energy invests $335m in Canada’s first transformer pressboard plant
Hitachi Energy and the federal and Ontario governments have announced a C$479m ($335m) transformer insulation factory in London, Ontario. It would be the first plant in Canada to make pressboard, a paper-pulp material essential to cooling transformers, and Hitachi’s first of its kind in the Americas. Canada currently sources the material from Europe. Construction is due to finish by the end of 2028, with 100 permanent jobs expected.
Public money is modest. Governments are contributing C$50m ($35m), made up of C$20m ($14m) from the federal strategic response fund, C$10m ($7m) from Natural Resources Canada and up to C$20m ($14m) from the Invest Ontario Fund. That is roughly a tenth of the outlay, with Hitachi carrying the rest. The company’s transformer chief says transformer assembly is moving faster than the industrial inputs behind it. The site sits next to its June acquisition, Canduct, an insulation-kit maker, which shortens the supply chain. The structural point is that the bottleneck is migrating from finished transformers to the sub-components behind them.
India is already part of this story. Hitachi Energy has pressboard capacity at Mysuru, including a new bay for high-density insulation pressboard. A partner at the launch said it would help cut India’s pressboard imports. A bushings factory at Halol, due to start production in 2026, is meant to quadruple India’s dry-bushing capacity for EHV and UHV transformers. Hitachi Energy India has also announced ₹2,000 crore ($210m) for a large power transformer factory at Karjan, Vadodara, due by FY2028. It cites a Central Electricity Authority estimate of ₹7.93 lakh crore ($83.1bn) in transmission investment to integrate over 900 GW of non-fossil capacity by 2035.
The lesson for India is that its grid build-out competes with Canada, Europe and the US for the same constrained pool of transformer capacity. Control over insulation, bushings and other components is therefore as strategic as final assembly. The parent’s $1.5bn global transformer capacity programme to 2027 suggests India’s component base is becoming part of a wider regional manufacturing network.
