Status: 11/12/2022 3:33 p.m
Germany has to import 39 out of 46 critical raw materials. A study commissioned by the government warns of this increasing dependency. Economics Minister Habeck considers the dependency on China to be too great.
A study commissioned by the federal government warns that German companies are becoming increasingly dependent on raw materials. If 14 critical raw materials were still identified in 2011, by 2020 there were already 30, according to the study by the management consultancy Ernst & Young (EY), which had been commissioned by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and which has now been published.
“Due to the increasing demand for high-tech and energy-efficient innovations, an easing of this development is not to be expected,” it said. In the study, 46 raw materials are classified as “strategic” because they are of great importance for the production of important goods, especially in the high-technology sector.
Germany is dependent on imports for 39 of these raw materials. “Especially for supply chains that are hardly diversified, there is an increased supply risk,” the authors of the study state. Like a study by the German Economic Institute (IW), EY comes to the conclusion that the dependency on China, for example for rare earths or lithium, which is important for battery technology, is particularly high.
Government is looking for a solution
Since Russia’s attack on Ukraine, Western governments have also been scrutinizing dependence on China more closely. The People’s Republic is, among other things, the main supplier of rare earths. The federal government has been working for months on a new strategy that is intended to try to reduce this dependency with various measures.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz emphasized last week that this must also include the use of domestic raw material deposits. Other instruments include a state financing fund suggested by Germany and France at EU level for the development of new raw material deposits in Europe.
BDI insists on local deposits
The Federation of German Industries (BDI) also demands this. “Domestic raw materials are part of the solution for more sustainability and the reduction of import dependencies,” said Matthias Wachter, head of the department responsible for raw materials at the BDI of the Reuters news agency.
“For many mineral raw materials, the dependence, especially on China, is already much greater than Germany’s previous dependence on Russian gas,” he warned. “Diversification also includes building up capacities for the further processing of raw materials in Europe. This applies in particular to the first stage with smelters and smelters,” he warned. The background is that China also imports lithium, but then sells it processed again on the world market.
Habeck wants to set new incentives
Economics Minister Robert Habeck told the ntv broadcaster that Germany’s economic dependence on China was too great. In certain areas, such as important raw materials, it is almost 100 percent. “If China were to disappear as a sales market, some German industries would not be able to cope,” he warned. For a long time, the low production costs were considered “the only thing that saves”. In addition, China has thrown huge deposits of raw materials cheaply onto the market.
Habeck takes issue with the fact that “40 percent of the total volume of state investment guarantees” has so far been spent on investments in China. He announced that the investment guarantee per company and per country would be limited to three billion euros. He said in the interview that there were only other state safeguards for investments that the respective company made in another country.
“In this way, we want to prevent all of a company’s foreign investments from flowing into a single country.” At the same time, he made it clear that he was not interested in decoupling from China. “At the end of the road, the German economy should be more robust.”