Such a decision was made due to the fact that China "controls most of the lithium" in the world, he added.
"The United States wants us to have something like a US-Ukraine consortium. We have large lithium resources. They want to build a plant to extract lithium in mines on the territory of Ukraine," Arakhamia said at the "Investing and Rebuilding Ukraine's Future" conference in Tallinn.
Arakhamia also noted that Ukraine has the largest and "cheapest" underground gas storage facility in Europe, and foreign investors could use it to store gas until its price increases.
Earlier, Sputnik reported that Western officials repeatedly expressed interest in Ukrainian deposits of rare earth minerals as an alternative to Russian and Chinese supplies.