Top producers Latin America’s poorest nation has had at least 27 different presidents and military juntas rule in the last five decades.

Although the authorities considered lead a minor metal, production increased from 9,000 tons in 1987 to 11,000 tons in 1988. In 2013, private enterprises produced the largest share of minerals by mass and value. “Whatever we promised we made it happen so far. Morales once said he wanted to see “a lithium-powered Toyota made in Bolivia.”In South America, lithium is found mixed in a salty mud sitting beneath salt flats high in the mountains. “ACI Systems doesn’t have the technical nor the financial capacity to undertake a challenge of this magnitude.”But mining lithium from brine is not easy, and neither is manufacturing a product with the chemistry composition that battery makers demand at a competitive cost. The In the late 1980s, however, tin still accounted for a third of all Bolivian mineral exports because of the strong performance by the medium and small mining sectors. Workers walk on a new industrial pool inside the Uyuni salt flat. Battery giants like Samsung SDI and Panasonic use these products in the rechargeable batteries that go into electric vehicles.ACI has no track record dealing with brine or manufacturing battery parts.

“Investors are concerned with both return on capital and return of capitalIn the next few weeks, YLB will also start building a $96 million industrial plant with capacity to produce up to 18,000 tons of lithium carbonate by early 2020, Montenegro said. Comibol took fifteen years to bring tin production to its The decentralization of Comibol under the Rehabilitation Plan reduced the company's payroll from 27,000 employees to under 7,000 in less than a year. Still, the government is eager to tap into the global hunger for a mineral essential to power electric cars and build storage batteries. At the Huanuni mines, violent clashes among cooperative miners led to nationalization of the facility in 2007.Silver, zinc, lead, bismuth, and other minerals were all found with Bolivia's large tin reserves and, like tin, were considered strategic minerals. Getting the lithium out will prove far more difficult than bringing tourists in. All of Comibol's mines, previously responsible for the bulk of mining output, were shut down from September 1986 to May 1987 to examine the economic feasibility of each mine; some never reopened. The ambition is to ultimately transform Bolivia into a manufacturer of the rechargeable batteries inside The Bolivian government—South America’s longest-standing populist regime—is vowing to make itself into a mineral-and-battery player using mainly its own engineers. This would make Bolivia one of the top-producing nations and the source of about 20 percent of the world’s lithium by 2022, according to Bloomberg NEF projections.“Bolivia doesn’t host any established cathode producers,” “There are significant hurdles in them producing lithium, let alone developing a downstream industry for battery cathodes.”“Bolivia is quite frankly very risky relative to other parts of the world for lithium investment,” said Chris Berry, an analyst and founder of research firm House Mountain Partners LLC. The deal is expected to be formalized this month into a 49-51 joint venture with YLB. The salt crystallizes in the dry season, forming millions of tile-looking hexagons that span an area as large as Connecticut. Most observers doubt that Bolivia’s lithium will ever support a commercial mining operation.

With the collapse of tin, the government was increasingly interested in exploiting its large reserves of other minerals, particularly silver and zinc. There is a trust relation that we want to continue building up.”ACI recently signed an agreement with Bolivian President Evo Morales to build a $250 million lithium operation, the first step towards manufacturing cathodes and batteries in Bolivia. With the world’s top manufacturers already ramping up production, Bolivia and ACI’s push to produce lithium might have started too late.Previous attempts to exploit Bolivia’s lithium resources with companies including Lithium prices reached historic levels earlier this year, with lithium carbonate from South America selling at an average of $15,700 per ton in May and June before prices fell to around $14,375 per ton in October, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. “I am certain that lithium will be like an insurance on the economic and political side to contribute to the free and sovereign development of our beloved Bolivia,” Morales said in August.The country is holding presidential elections next year, and Morales’ government is expected to make an effort to close the lithium deal beforehand, following a significant blow at the International Court of Justice on a case related to Bolivia’s dispute for sea access to Chile.“In Bolivia we have a government that’s just been selling illusions, telling fairy tales and now they’re in a rush to show that they did a very good job and that lithium advances at a steady pace,” Zuleta said.

Because of Bolivia's vast territory and the high value of gold, contraband gold accounted for approximately 80 percent of exports.