The company will start exploration for lithium next month in the province of Catamarca. This will be the country's first project owned by a national company.
"Just imagine, each tonne of lithium carbonate today costs $70,000... Argentina could have about 200,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate for export in 2025," Salvaressa said.
According to him, there are about 20 lithium projects in Argentina, almost all of them are developed by foreign companies.
In March 2022, Canada's Alpha Lithium suspended a deal to sell to Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom's Uranium One Holding (U1H) a stake in a joint project to develop the Tollilar lithium deposit in Argentina.
Argentina, Bolivia and Chile have the largest reserves of lithium in the world. Bolivia intends to launch the first plant for the production of lithium carbonate next year, designed, among other things, for deliveries to Russia and China, Vice Minister of High Technologies Alvaro Arnes earlier told Sputnik.